Civil forfeiture is not a popular government activity. For those of you who don’t know, civil asset forfeiture according to the ACLU “allows police to seize — and then keep or sell — any property they allege is involved in a crime. Owners need not ever be arrested or convicted of a crime for their cash, cars, or even real estate to be taken away permanently by the government.”
If that sounds crazy to you, I assure you, it’s real. I don’t know how it’s real, because it’s certainly not constitutional—who needs the Fourth Amendment, am I right?— but it is real.
The Dallas Police Department stepped in a hornet’s nest on social media when they posted a braggadocious photo of a seizure of $100,000 in cash. Police confiscated the haul at Dallas Love Field Airport and then posted the photo on social media. The local CBS station picked it up and wrote a glowing article about it. I guess they thought the photo of an adorable German Shepherd (good boi!) standing over piles of cash he found with his incredibly smart and furry nose would make everyone forget that the police just robbed someone…legally. It didn’t work.
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