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AlterNet reports New Mexico Ends "Policing for Profit"
In a historic move, New Mexico Gov. Susana Martinez (R) [on April 10] signed into law a bill that will end civil asset forfeiture by law enforcement in the state, a practice widely known as "policing for profit." The measure is House Bill 560
Under civil asset forfeiture, police and prosecutors can seize someone's property without ever charging them with a crime, let alone convicting them. Police can then funnel many of those assets, including cash seizures, back to their own departments, creating a vicious cycle of more profit-driven law enforcement providing more resources to law enforcement for more profit-driven law enforcement.
"This is a good day for the Bill of Rights," said [American Civil Liberties Union of New Mexico] Executive Director Peter Simonson. "For years, police could seize people's cash, cars, and houses without even accusing anyone of a crime. Today, we have ended this unfair practice in New Mexico and replaced it with a model that is just and constitutional."
The practice of asset forfeiture has been coming under increasing scrutiny and criticism in recent years as cases of abuse become more widely known. The Obama administration Justice Department has in the past few months taken steps to address asset forfeiture abuse at the federal level, and asset forfeiture reform bills have been introduced in a number of states this year. The governor of Wyoming vetoed one last month.
New Mexico is the first state where such a bill has passed, and it now has the strongest asset forfeiture protections in the county. The bill passed the legislature unanimously.
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday April 13 2015, @08:46PM
I don't know how AC intended it, but this is a real thing that will happen. Other places have banned asset forfeiture, and the local cops end up "cooperating" with a federal agency (DHS or DEA) when they think there is valuable property to loot so that the feds can officially be the ones to take the property. Then the feds give the vast majority of the take back to the local cops. It's a clear case of the federal government purposefully giving law enforcement an easy loophole around laws meant to curtail this abuse of power. There's a book called Rise of The Warrior Cop by Radley Balko that covers this (and many other problems with American law enforcement) in depth, but unfortunately it has a lot of fluff in it as well. Still worth reading if you're interested in the topic.
I think laws like this are nice because they make it harder for cops to steal your shit, but they aren't a silver bullet.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday April 14 2015, @01:01PM
IIRC, this bill does address that issue as much as it can. Not only can local cops not seize the property, they can't receive compensation for seized property from the feds either. Not all states have forfeiture laws, and even where they do it's still common for cops to prefer to go through the feds. Less paperwork apparently. So they refer it to the feds, the feds take a cut, and they turn the rest back over to the local cops, and there's no need to use any local asset forfeiture law. But I believe this bill bans that practice as well. Of course, it can still be seized by federal agents directly, but there's no incentive for the local guys to get them involved in the first place.