Usually no one cares when a drug dealer loses money through a little-known or understood forfeiture proceeding. This law, beloved by police departments nationwide, has been a lucrative source of cash to fund cop wish-lists. In some cases, however, it just provides a juicy temptation for greedy cops.
Michael Newsome, of North Chicago, IL, is one such cop. He stands accused of helping himself to $140,000 of such drug forfeiture funds. He apparently did not appreciate the inherent irony in taking the drug money. As Mexico has found out, the presence of large sums of cash does strange things to many people, including law enforcement agencies.
We should also focus on laws that permit forfeiture with only the low threshold of "probable cause" that it might be connected to the drug trade to permit its seizure. It might be time to give such laws a second look, and see if giving government and law enforcement largely unchecked and unsupervised forfeiture power squares with our democratic legal traditions.
