End Legalized Robbery by Law Enforcement

I've ranted about the forfeiture laws so many times I expect most of the readers here don't need any background. If you do, by all means read the entirety of Radley Balko's excellent piece. However, here's something I didn't know before:

The 1984 law lowered the bar for civil forfeiture. To seize property, the government had only to show probable cause to believe that it was connected to drug activity, or the same standard cops use to obtain search warrants. The state was allowed to use hearsay evidence—meaning a federal agent could testify that a drug informant told him a car or home was used in a drug transaction—but property owners were barred from using hearsay, and couldn’t even cross-examine some of the government’s witnesses. Informants, while being protected from scrutiny, were incentivized monetarily: According to the law, snitches could receive as much as one-quarter of the bounty, up to $50,000 per case.

So not only does law enforcement have a compelling interest in trumping up "probable cause" in order to enrich their own coffers, the snitches have an incentive to lie. Our LEOs already rely way too heavily on snitches entrapping vulnerable people in order to get their conviction rates up. This is no way to run a "justice system." It's long past time to abolish this practice.


[More posts daily at The Detroit News]