Civil asset forfeiture abuse is widespread, Encourages "policing for profit"

That's a nice SUV you got there. Sure would be a shame if we took it.

We’ve been writing about civil asset forfeiture since this organization’s founding in 2011. We’ve seen some progress over the years. But the practice is still widespread and takes advantage typically of the least powerful in our society. It’s one thing to take a convicted criminal’s property that was used in a serious crime (and even then there is often abuse), but it’s another thing to take the property of someone who has been convicted of nothing just because a cop thinks that a piece of property might somehow be tied to some illegal activity in some way.

That is exactly what happened to Dewonna Goodridge in Junction City Kansas.

(From Reason)

Goodridge's case began in June of last year, when Geary County sheriff's deputies pulled over her son, who was driving her Tahoe, for several alleged traffic violations. (The Kansas Justice Institute argued in a motion to suppress that the initial alleged infraction, failing to signal while exiting a roundabout, was not in fact a violation and that the rest of the ensuing traffic stop and search were illegal.)

After Goodridge's son had been detained, Geary deputies brought in a drug-sniffing dog. According to an affidavit from one of the arresting officers, the dog alerted on Goodridge's truck. The officer also claimed that she found "shake"—small marijuana crumbs—in the center console of the truck, although the affidavit goes on to note that "no items of evidence were collected upon completion of the search of the vehicle."

Still it took eight months for Dewonna to get her car back.

Click here for the article.

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