{"id":35260,"date":"2017-07-18T05:11:23","date_gmt":"2017-07-18T05:11:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/?p=35260"},"modified":"2017-07-18T05:11:23","modified_gmt":"2017-07-18T05:11:23","slug":"jeff-sessions-wants-police-to-take-more-cash-from-american-citizens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biphoo.com\/bipnews\/news\/jeff-sessions-wants-police-to-take-more-cash-from-american-citizens.html","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Sessions wants police to take more cash from American citizens"},"content":{"rendered":"

Jeff Sessions wants police to take more cash from American citizens<\/span><\/strong><\/span><\/h2>\n

Jeff Sessions wants police to take more cash from American citizens:- Jeff Sessions wants police to take more cash from American citizens:- Attorney General Jeff Sessions on Monday said he’d be issuing a new directive this week aimed at increasing police seizures of cash and property.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe hope to issue this week a new directive on asset forfeiture \u2014 especially for drug traffickers,\u201d Sessions said in his prepared remarks for a speech to the National District Attorney’s Association in Minneapolis. “With care and professionalism, we plan to develop policies to increase forfeitures. No criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime. Adoptive forfeitures are appropriate as is sharing with our partners.”<\/span><\/p>\n

Asset forfeiture is a disputed practice that allows law enforcement officials to permanently take money and goods from individuals suspected of crime. There is little disagreement among lawmakers, authorities and criminal justice reformers that \u201cno criminal should be allowed to keep the proceeds of their crime.\u201d But in many cases, neither a criminal conviction nor even a criminal charge is necessary \u2014 under forfeiture laws in most states and at the federal level, mere suspicion of wrongdoing is enough to allow police to seize items permanently.<\/span><\/p>\n

Additionally, many states allow law enforcement agencies to keep cash that they seize, creating what critics characterize as a profit motive. The practice is widespread: in 2014, federal law enforcement officers took more property from citizens than burglars did. State and local authorities seized untold millions more.<\/span><\/p>\n

Since 2007, the Drug Enforcement Administration alone has taken more than $3 billion in cash from people not charged with any crime, according to the Justice Department’s Inspector General.<\/span><\/p>\n

The practice is ripe for abuse. In one case in 2016, Oklahoma police seized $53,000 owned by a Christian band, an orphanage and a church after stopping a man on a highway for a broken taillight. A few years earlier, a Michigan drug task force raided the home of a self-described \u201csoccer mom,\u201d suspecting she was not in compliance with the state’s medical marijuana law. They proceeded to take \u201cevery belonging\u201d from the family, including tools, a bicycle and her daughter’s birthday money.<\/span><\/p>\n

In recent years, states have begun to clamp down on the practice.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThirteen states now allow forfeiture only in cases where there’s been a criminal conviction,\u201d said Robert Everett Johnson, an attorney for the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm that represents forfeiture defendants.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2015, Eric Holder’s Justice Department issued a memo sharply curtailing a particular type of forfeiture practice that allowed local police to share part of their forfeiture proceeds with federal authorities. Known as \u201cadoptive\u201d forfeiture, it allowed state and local authorities to sidestep sometimes stricter state laws, processing forfeiture cases under the more permissive federal statute.<\/span><\/p>\n

These types of forfeitures amounted to a small total of assets seized by federal authorities, so the overall impact on forfeiture practices was relatively muted. Still, criminal justice reform groups on the left and the right cheered the move as a signal that the Obama administration was serious about curtailing forfeiture abuses.<\/span><\/p>\n

In his speech Monday, Attorney General Sessions appeared to specifically call out adoptive forfeitures as an area for potential expansion. \u201cAdoptive forfeitures are appropriate,\u201d he said, \u201cas is sharing with our partners.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThis is a federalism issue,\u201d Johnson said. \u201cAny return to federal adoptive forfeitures would \u201ccircumvent limitations on civil forfeiture that are imposed by state legislatures \u2026 the Department of Justice is saying ‘we’re going to help state and local law enforcement to get around those reforms.’\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Source:-\u00a0https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/wonk\/wp\/2017\/07\/17\/jeff-sessions-wants-police-to-take-more-cash-from-american-citizens\/?utm_term=.3458d948e58c<\/span><\/p>\n

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