Police Can Seize and Sell Assets Even When the Owner Broke No Law
11th November 2014
You don’t have to be convicted of a crime — or even accused of one — for police to seize your car or other property. It’s legal. Several videos online are shedding some light on the controversial practice.
The practice is called civil asset forfeiture, and every year it brings cities millions of dollars in revenue, which often goes directly to the police budget. Police confiscate cars, jewelry, cash and homes they think are connected to crime. But the people these things belong to may have done nothing wrong.
In one video posted by The New York Times, Harry S. Connelly, the city attorney of Las Cruces, N.M., gleefully describes how the city collects these “little goodies,” calling it a “gold mine.”