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“You follow drugs, you get drug addicts and drug dealers. But you start to follow the money, and you don't know where the f*** it's gonna take you.”
This oft-cited wisdom comes from Detective Lester Freamon, a character in the classic HBO series The Wire, which tracked how an elite task force of (fictional) Baltimore cops used electronic surveillance to bring down criminal networks. But, the sentiment is ironic to a fault: if you keep following the money, it might take you right back to the police.
Asset forfeiture has long been a topic of controversy in law enforcement. Cops and prosecutors have had the power to seize property and cash from suspects before anyone has actually been convicted of a crime (usually narcotics-related). Then these law enforcement agencies have plugged a portion of that money (and money derived from auctioning of property) into their own budgets, allowing them to spend in ways that possibly would not have passed scrutiny during the formal appropriations process.Critics note that asset forfeiture creates a perverse incentive for policing priorities: the more assets cops seize, the more money they get to spend. Satirist John Oliver characterized the practice as akin to “legalized robbery by law enforcement” in a must-watch segment on his show Last Week Tonight. News organizations, including New York Times, the New Yorker and the Washington Free Beacon have recently outlined abuses of the system.
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The Washington Post has released its giant cache of Equitable Sharing Agreements from thousands of local law enforcement agencies around the country. We urge you to dig in, find your local cops, identify out how they’ve spend this money, and let the world know what you find.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 23 2015, @02:30AM
So Obama is the one that wrote the laws allowing legalized theft, or didn't veto them when Congress wrote them during his term, and that's why the "liberal press" didn't run with the stories? Or is this more bullshit smearing of Obama for things with which he had nothing to do?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by JNCF on Friday January 23 2015, @01:25PM
Come on now, he's the President. He has been for six years, and he appointed Holder who recently made a statement about this practice. It's not like they just found out that their jackboots were are stealing shit from normal citizens. They've known the whole time, they just don't care. Bush didn't care either, but that doesn't make it okay for Obama to not care. People need to stop acting like Presidents aren't responsible for the actions of the federal government.
(Score: 2) by DeathMonkey on Friday January 23 2015, @07:39PM
They've known the whole time, they just don't care.
The fact that they are banning/limiting the practice should indicate to a rational person that they do in fact care.
If they don't care why are they changing anything?
(Score: 2) by JNCF on Monday January 26 2015, @02:16PM
They're politicians, my Dear; they poll.