Under the Equitable Sharing program, local police would seize the property and turn it over to federal authorities. In just the past seven years, local and state law enforcement have made more than 55,000 seizures worth some $3 billion. The way it would work is local police would make the seizures and then have them “adopted” by the feds, and then they would share in the proceeds from the sale of the confiscated property, keeping up to 80 percent of it (the feds would take 20 percent) to do with it what they wanted. That warrantless “stop and seize” practice now ends, says Holder.
Holder says the property forfeiture has been an effective crime-fighting tool when used appropriately, but critics counter that it’s been abused by some local and state law enforcement agencies as a way to increase their coffers with dubious seizures, such as in routine traffic stops.
Since 2001, nearly half of the country’s 18,000 police departments had been participating in the program, and in some cases the property forfeitures accounted for 20 percent of a department’s budget.
Earlier this month, several members of Congress, including Wisconsin Republican James Sensenbrenner, Chairman of the Crime, Terrorism, Homeland Security and Oversight Subcommittee, sent a letter to Holder asking him to discontinue the program, and to adopt procedures to ensure that “the property of innocent Americans is not being swept up in overzealous asset forfeiture.”
There are several exceptions to the ban, including seizure of illegal firearms and child pornography.
