State and local police will no longer be allowed to seize citizens’ property without evidence that a crime has occurred, following an action by attorney general Eric Holder to effectively end the program.
Holder on Friday announced a new policy that, with a few exceptions, prohibits state and local law enforcement from implementing the controversial Equitable Sharing Program, which was created in 1985 as part of the US government’s “war on drugs”.
The program is meant to allow law enforcement agencies to use property they believe has been obtained through illegal means to inject funds into their departments. In practice, it has been criticized for allowing officers to seize the assets of people in such innocuous circumstances as traffic stops without requiring the property’s owner to be found guilty of a crime.
The Washington Post has been investigating the controversial program and said in September that police have made more than $2.5m from people without search warrants since 9/11.
In the time since the terrorist attacks, close to 7,600 of the country’s 18,000 police departments have participated in the program. In some law enforcement offices, civil forfeitures accounted for 20% or more of their budgets.
Under the new policy, the Justice Department said law enforcement officials can still seize property that “relates to public safety concerns, including firearms, ammunition, explosives and property associated with child pornography”.
Local and state law enforcement can also pursue asset forfeiture according to the laws of their states.
“With this new policy, effective immediately, the Justice Department is taking an important step to prohibit federal agency adoptions of state and local seizures, except for public safety reasons,” Holder said in a statement. “This is the first step in a comprehensive review that we have launched of the federal asset forfeiture program.”
He said that asset forfeiture is a critical law enforcement tool when used appropriately. “This new policy will ensure that these authorities can continue to be used to take the profit out of crime and return assets to victims, while safeguarding civil liberties,” said Holder.
Democrats and Republicans in Congress have been developing legislation to examine the program.
The US department of treasury is issuing a policy similar to the Justice Department’s for its forfeiture program, which began in 1993.
