>Holder said there is also less need for the Equitable Sharing program.
>“Today, however, every state has either criminal or civil forfeiture laws, making the federal adoption process less necessary,” Holder’s statement said.
> ...police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, the federal program was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police departments.
In other words, no longer will your rights be violated vis-a-vis the forfeiture of assets - without proof of a crime - under Federal Law. Rather, local police will be violating rights and taking assets under State Law.
Reading between the lines (e.g. following the money), it is clear the State's are behind this change and not the outrage of law makers at the notion police forces are strong-arm robbing ordinary citizens. Whereas under the Federal law money goes direct to the police agency and under state laws the money goes to a State fund where presumably the State law makers can get their greedy little hands on the money.
Rather, local police will be violating rights and taking assets under State Law.
Fortunately, it's less attractive for local police now: a good number of states apparently have laws on the books that require the proceeds of asset seizure to go to the state's general fund (or in some cases something specific like the state education fund), rather than allowing police to pocket it for their own uses. The federal "sharing" program allowed police to skirt around this and keep the assets themselves. I suspect there will be far fewer instances of seizures once the police realize they aren't going to see any of it.
> In other words, no longer will your rights be violated vis-a-vis the forfeiture of assets - without proof of a crime - under Federal Law. Rather, local police will be violating rights and taking assets under State Law.
The reason local police have been using federal law to do this is that seizures under federal law belong to the feds, but federal law has a proceeds-sharing system which gives most of it back to the seizing agency, where state laws usually reserve seizure proceeds under state law to the state general fund. Without the agency-specific revenue enhancement provided by federal seizure rules, there is far less incentive for police to pursue seizure.
(That doesn't mean they won't still when they have other motivations, like "punishing" a target that they don't have sufficient evidence to criminally charge. But by removing the federal option, a powerful incentive for the use of seizure has also been removed.)
>“Today, however, every state has either criminal or civil forfeiture laws, making the federal adoption process less necessary,” Holder’s statement said.
> ...police can continue to make seizures under their own state laws, the federal program was easy to use and required most of the proceeds from the seizures to go to local and state police departments.
In other words, no longer will your rights be violated vis-a-vis the forfeiture of assets - without proof of a crime - under Federal Law. Rather, local police will be violating rights and taking assets under State Law.
Reading between the lines (e.g. following the money), it is clear the State's are behind this change and not the outrage of law makers at the notion police forces are strong-arm robbing ordinary citizens. Whereas under the Federal law money goes direct to the police agency and under state laws the money goes to a State fund where presumably the State law makers can get their greedy little hands on the money.