John Oliver: The police.
They protect us.
They serve us.
And they provide us with an endless source
of T.V show one-liners.
Clip1: Rock, paper, scissors, gun.
Clip2: Well, I'm no Serena Williams,
but I know one thing;
it's all in the wrist.
Clip3 (Officer): Who'd want to cut your penis off?
Suspect: Take a number.
John Oliver: Okay. [laughing]
Now, you laugh but admit it.
You want to watch the rest of that episode
right now.
[laughing]
Now look.
Public trust in the police is one of the
most vital elements in a civilized society
but for many Americans, that trust has
been undermined by a procedure called
civil forfeiture.
Now, I know it sounds like a
Gweneth Paltrow euphemism for divorce,
but incredibly its actually even worse
than that.
Ezekiel Edwards: Civil Asset forfeiture is
really a mechanism by which the state and
federal government can seize people's
property without having to convict them of
a crime.
Most people can't afford to hire a lawyer
to challenge it.
It's really legalized robbery by law
enforcement.
John Oliver: Think about it.
That is a tough crime to report to
the police.
Give me a description of what the guy
looked like.
Well, to be honest, he looked a lot like
the guy currently asking me what the
guy looked like. [laughing]
And if you think this sounds bad,
just wait until you see how it looks.
Because the Washington Post recently
published a major investigation featuring
stories like that of this man who was
driving from Michigan to San Francisco with
$2,400 in cash that his dad had lent him
to start a new job when he was pulled over
in Nevada.
Matt Lee: I gave him my license and
registration, and then as he was looking
at that information, he asked me how much
money I was traveling with.
Narrator: Lee told him about the money
that his Dad give him which he kept in the
trunk.
Matt Lee: He told me to turn on my air
vents on high and roll up my windows
and get out of the car because he was
going to run a canine around it.
Narrator: Dove didn't find drugs, but he
did find the $2400.
Matt Lee: He said, "Now, I am going to
keep the money because I have concluded
through my investigation here that you are
traveling from Michigan to California to
purchase drugs.
John Oliver: Wow.
There is so much wrong there,
including the fact that any policeman
who genuinely believes that you need
to travel from Michigan to California to
purchase drugs needs to be introduced
to the concept of the University of Wisconsin Madison.
[laughing]
Okay.
It’s right there.
And the problem is, stories like that
are surprisingly common.
In fact, since 9/11 under just one program
police have taken $2.5 billion in the
course of over 61,000 seizures of cash
alone from people who,
and this is the mind-blowing part,
were not charged with a crime.
That is the sort of police behavior that
we laugh at other countries for,
along with their accents and silly hats.
[laughing]
The way Civil Forfeiture generally works
is if the police believe they have a
preponderance of the evidence that
suggests your property was
or could be used in a crime,
they may confiscate it.
And it gets even weirder.
Sarah Stillman: Many folks are unfamiliar
with the idea of Civil Forfeiture which is
actually a case brought against,
directly against, a piece of property
where you don’t need to be proven guilty
of a crime for your goods to
be taken away.
John Oliver: Exactly, you don’t need to
be charged with a crime because
it’s not you that’s on trial,
it’s your stuff.
That’s why these cases have historically
had eye-catching names such as,
and all of these are real,
“United States v. Eight Thousand Eight Hundred
and Fifty Dollars in United States Currency”
[laughing]
“United States v. An Article Consisting
of 50,000 Cardboard Boxes More or Less,
Each Containing One Pair of Clacker Balls”
and “United States v. Approximately
64,695 Pounds of Shark Fins”
which must have been an amazing court case.
And do you see those shark fins
in the room right now?
Yes, there they are, there they are!
[laughing] Let the record show that
the witness has pointed at roughly 65,000
pounds of shark fins. Guilty, guilty!
And it’s also worth noting that your
possessions generally have fewer
protections under the law than you do.
Scott Bullock: Under Civil Forfeiture
laws your property is guilty until
you prove it innocent.
John Oliver: How can that be possible?
[laughing] At this point, I’m surprised
that objects don’t have their own
civil rights leader.
Like Martin Scooter King,
or Harvey Carton of Milk. [laughing]
Now, to be fair, civil forfeiture laws
have had some positive consequences.
They’ve crippled powerful drug-trafficking
organizations, thwarted criminals,
and returned billions of dollars
to victims. The problem is, that many
police departments are allowed to keep
most or all of the money they seize.
Knowing that starts to make you wonder
about the motivations of these
kinds of questions:
Clip: “Is there any large amounts of cash
in the vehicle?”
“Are there any large sums of money
over $5,000 in cash in the vehicle?”
“How much money you got?”
“Any large amounts of US currency in there?
John Oliver: I’ll take whatever cash
you got in there and ah
is that a slurpee in the cup holder?
What flavor? [laughing] Grape?
Nevermind. You know what? I will take it.
I’ll take it. The question,
do you have cash in the vehicle is
surprisingly common in traffic stops.
The police are prepared to overcome
any language barrier to ask it.
Clip: “tenny mucho mucho dinero
in su trucky-trailer” [laughing]
John Oliver: Let’s be clear, he just said
“tenny mucho mucho dinero in su trucky-trailer”
which sounds like an alien's first
attempt to communicate with humans after
crash landing in a Taco Bell.
[laughing]
In fact, let’s all just pause for a
moment to enjoy that sentence
because every single word of it is funny.
First, tenny, pronounced incorrectly.
Mucho, one of the few words he knows
in Spanish. Mucho, repeated word.
Deniro, a famed actor.
In, a rapid shift to English.
Su, rapid shift back to Spanish.
Trucky-trailer, trucky-trailer. [laughing]
Now It’s magnificent. That is magnificent.
It’s a work of art. [applause]
Now this happened in Tennessee,
a state where local law enforcement
authorities are allowed to keep as much
as 100% of the proceeds from
civil forfeitures.
A local news investigation found
multiple troubling cases of people
having money seized such as George Rebee
who had $20,000 seized after he was
stopped for speeding.
The police officer argued it was drug
money despite the fact that Rebee
had a pretty good explanation.
George Rebee: I told him that I had active
bids on eBay, that I was trying to buy
a vehicle and they just
didn’t want to hear it.
Narrator: In fact, Rebee had proof on
his computer, but the (?) officer
drew up a damning affidavit citing his own
training that common people do not
carry this much US Currency.
Clip: “...and did he tell you that
he was trying to buy a car?”
Officer: “He did.”
Reporter: “But you did not include that
in your report.”
[laughing] Officer: “If it’s not in there,
I didn’t put it in there”.
“So why would you leave that out?"
Officer: “I don’t know”.
John Oliver: What do you mean
you don’t know? I’d expect a better
answer from a police officer than
a four-year-old who just spilled grape
juice on the couch.
What happened to your drink?
I don’t know. I don’t know.
If it’s not in my glass, it’s not in my glass.
I don’t know. I don’t know. [laughing, applause]
And look, it’s not always just a
roadside stop.
In 2008 police raided the
Contemporary Art Institute of Detroit
during it’s “funk night” because it didn’t
have a liquor license seizing 44 cars
under the argument that
“simply driving vehicles to the location
of an unlawful sale of alcohol was
sufficient to seize a car”
which means you may as well seize
any car driven by any teenager on prom
night because they are all going
Chad’s place. Chad’s got the hook up.
We actually managed to get the security
video of that Detroit raid and you can
see the police burst in and arrest people
with the disco lights still swirling in
the single funkiest shake-down
in human history. [laughing]
They each had to pay $900 to get their
cars out of the impound with the
exception of the one person who’s car
was actually stolen from the lot to
which it had been towed,
which seems like the sort of thing
the police should be investigating if they
weren’t too busy raiding art
gallery funk nights.
And at this point, you may be thinking,
well sure the police departments are
getting a lot of money from seizing stuff,
but I’m sure there are limitations on how
they can spend it.
Well, allow me to take you to a 2012
Columbia Missouri Citizen Police
Review Board hearing.
Clip: How do you decide forfeiture funds?
Police Chief Ken Burton: “You know,
it’s usually based on a need.
Um Well, I take that back.
Review Board: “I would imagine you sign
off on...”
Ken Burton: “Yeah, there are some
limitations on it.
You know, it’s um actually there’s not
really on the forfeiture stuff.”
John Oliver: Actually, there’s basically
no limitations at all.
Come to think of it, there’s well,
we’re essentially Gods. We're gods.
We’re like the anti-Spiderman,
great power no responsibility. [laughing]
I can’t believe this hasn’t come up before.
And look his honesty was not over.
Ken Burton: We just usually base it on
something that would be nice to have,
that we can’t get in the budget for instance.
Though, yeah, we try not to use it for things
that we need to depend on because we need
to go ahead and have those purchased.
But, it’s kind of like pennies
from heaven ya know, it gets you a toy
or something that you need is the way
that we typically look at it.
John Oliver: That’s right. That’s right.
They buy toys with "pennies from heaven."
Well, they should know those pennies
may not be falling from
heaven so much as from the pockets of
the people they are holding upside down
and shaking. And in terms of what kinds
of toys police departments buy,
that really depends.
For instance, in Massachusetts,
one DA’s office used forfeiture money to
buy their own Zamboni even though,
all this is noted, “we could not determine
where this machine was located or the
law-enforcement purpose it serves.”
Although that last one is obvious.
Just think about it.
If you are robbing a bank and the police
pull up in a Zamboni, you’re going to give
yourself up just out of sheer curiosity.
[laughing]
And in Texas, one DA’s office had an
even more imaginative idea,
and I’ll let a concerned citizen at a
a public hearing tell you all about it.
Clip: With or without a law degree,
everyone here knows that purchases of
kegs of beer, margarita machines,
and bottles of Crown Royal for office
parties, as was done in Montgomery County
don’t qualify as expenses
for official purposes.
John Oliver: That’s true.
In Texas they bought a margarita machine.
They were literally using this money as
their own personal slush fund. [laughing]
It’s perfect, the analogy is perfect.
And look, look.
If the police need money for equipment,
we should clearly be giving it to them.
And if they need money for margarita
machines, they should be (Bleep) paying
for that themselves. [laughing]
But, these civil forfeiture laws have
warped law enforcement priorities and
perception and nowhere is that more
clear than Philadelphia.
Video Clip, CNN: Philadelphia officials
over a 10 year period have seized more
than 1,000 houses, about 3,300 vehicles,
and $44 million in cash in civil forfeitures.
John Oliver: Holy shit.
Usually when someone describes something
taking 3,000 vehicles and 1,000 houses,
they're talking about a (bleep) hurricane.
Now, one of those houses belongs to the
Sourovelis family and the reason for that
seizure seems a little harsh from the outside.
Clip, CNN: Police arrested their
22-year-old son Yianni on drug charges,
$40 worth of heroine, and claimed he was
selling drugs out of the home.
Police and prosecutors came armed with a
law suit against the house itself.
John Oliver: Exactly, because remember
The parents aren’t on trial, the house is,
which is clearly ridiculous.
The only drug-containing house that needs
a law suit against it is this one.
[laughing] You’re on the edge.
You’re on the edge, House.
You’re this close.
You’re this close to loosing your job.
[laughing and applause]
You’re good, dammit. You're good, House.
But you're close, House. You're close.
You're good but you're so close.
But you're so good, House.
And once their house was seized,
the Sourovelis’ got to experience the
final problem with civil forfeiture.
Recourse can be incredibly difficult.
Clip, CNN: Here in Philadelphia if you
have your property taken, you can come
here to city hall and go to courtroom 478
and try to get it back. The problem is,
the people that are taking the belongings
are also the ones calling the shots
inside the courtroom.
The Sourovelis’ showed up to courtroom 478
ready to plead their case to a judge.
Instead, they say they faced a prosecutor
from the DA’s office.
John Oliver: That’s right.
Their first step in challenging the police
seizing their property was in a courtroom
without a judge hearing their case.
How can you even still call that a
courtroom? If you take all of the doctors
out of a hospital and replace them with
otters, that’s no longer a hospital.
[laughing] It's better. It’s much better,
but it’s not a hospital. I love it,
but it’s not a hospital.
In fact, recourse is so difficult that
most people who have lost stuff to
civil forfeiture, just choose to walk away
rather than fight.
So at this point it should seem obvious
that the bad may be starting to outweigh
the good with civil forfeiture laws.
So we’ve really got two choices.
We can take a hard look at reforming them
or at the very least we need to reform our
network cop dramas to make them a lot more
representative of what is actually happening.
[laughing]
Clip: Narrator: Coming soon. Law & Order.
Civil Asset Forfeiture Unit.
Get ready to go inside the thrilling world
of civil forfeiture.
Knock knock. Freeze, police!
Hands on the ground; get off the sofa.
Keep ‘em where we can see ‘em.
You’re under arrest.
Man: What for? You guys got nothing on me.
Not you, the sofa.
Narrator: Coming this fall, a procedural
about law enforcement’s shadiest procedure.
Officer: Rough night huh?
Ah, well it’s about to get a lot rougher.
What’s $2,500 in cash doing hanging out
in somebody’s glove box huh? Answer me!
Narrator: These cops are determined and
they won’t stop until they get everything.
Every...last...thing.
Officer: You’re dirty right?
Drug deal, guns, what is it?
I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me!
I’m gonna beat the shit out of ya.
Officer: Detective Bovatchi, Civil Forfeiture Unit
Narrator: Brace yourself for heart
pounding take downs.
Officer: Resisting arrest?
Send in back up! Send in back up!
Narrator: The defendants are inanimate,
but the drama is anything but.
Officer: Frisk ‘em.
Officer: There is a pile of silver dollars next
door that says you did it.
You will lose, and I will win.
Officer: Stay on the streets too long,
the city leaves a bad taste in your mouth.
Officer: Hey, I know what’ll get it out.
[laughing, applause]
Narrator: Law & Order.
Civil Asset Forfeiture Unit.
Officer: I’m going to crumple you up
until you look like a cat’s asshole.
[applause]