"A few years ago, The New Yorker published an article (“Taken”) detailing civil asset forfeiture abuses in America.
Sarah Stillman, a staff writer at the magazine and a visiting scholar at NYU, chronicled several examples of citizens stripped of cash, cars, and even homes even though they had not been charged with a crime.
The abuses were so egregious I found them difficult to believe.
Take the case of Jennifer Boatright, a waitress at a bar in Houston bar-and-grill.
She, her boyfriend, and her two children were driving down U.S. 59 near the Texas-Louisiana border when they were pulled over for driving in the left lane for a short while without passing.
Authorities asked to search the vehicle.
Permission was granted. No drugs were found, but some cash was, as was “a marbled-glass pipe that Boatright said was a gift for her sister-in-law.”
Which would you choose?
And there is the case of James Morrow, a factory worker who sliced chicken for a living. Via the New Yorker:
In August, 2007, [Tenaha, Texas] police pulled Morrow over for ‘driving too close to the white line,’ and took thirty-nine hundred dollars from him.
Morrow told Guillory that he was on his way to get dental work done at a Houston mall.
(The arresting officers said that his “stories of travel” were inconsistent, as was his account of how much money he had; they also said they detected the “odor of burned marijuana,” although no contraband was found in the car.)
Morrow, who is black, was taken to jail, where he pleaded with authorities to call his bank to see proof of his recent cash withdrawal.
They declined.
Could law enforcement authorities really be taking the property of citizens who are not even charged with a crime let alone convicted of one?
And could it be happening a grand scale?
The answer to both of those questions is yes..."
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