Through the officially sanctioned plunder called “civil asset forfeiture,” police departments across the country have confiscated untold millions in cash and property – and now some of the robbers are squabbling over how to divide the loot.

Police officers in the town of Westminster, Maryland (population roughly 19,000) are accusing their superiors “of misspending money seized from drug suspects by buying iPads and iPhones for top commanders,” reports the Baltimore Sun. It’s important to understand that through civil asset forfeiture, cash or property can be confiscated – that is, stolen – from people who have never been formally accused of a criminal offense, let alone convicted of one. This is a different proposition from criminal asset forfeiture, which involves seizure of money or property from an individual who has actually been convicted of a crime.

Through their local union, the Carroll County Fraternal Order of Police, officers in Westminster have charged that “bosses are getting all the perks while the rank and file are left cleaning up the mess,” explains attorney and police union labor negotiator Gary McLhinney.

While dismissing the allegations as union posturing in the context of contract negotiations, police and city officials have yet to offer a substantive denial.

Reports the Sun:

“Clearly, someone disagrees with the manner in which some of the forfeiture funds have been spent,” said Westminster Police Chief Jeffrey Spaulding, declining to confirm, as the law firm alleges, that he and his top commanders — a major and three captains — have iPhones or iPads purchased with funds collected as part of criminal forfeitures.

The mayor refused to say how much money the city has gotten from the asset forfeiture program, or release an annual audit of the programs at participating police agencies in Carroll County.

“We’re not going to release anything from the city of Westminster until we have a chance to talk to our attorney,” Utz said. “Then we’ll be able to respond. I have nothing to hide.”

Expenditures from asset forfeiture programs must follow guidelines from the U.S. Department of Justice. McLhinney said he is not alleging that the spending was illegal but that it was inappropriate. The guidelines, for example, allow money to be spent on computers and communication equipment.

McLhinney said the money shouldn’t be spent on smartphones for commanders but for officers who could use them. For instance, Baltimore police officers have BlackBerrys that can access warrant information. “There are men and women risking their lives to make these seizures, what, so the boss can have an Apple iPhone?” he said.

The idea that police are “risking their lives” to confiscate money and property is self-serving and melodramatic. Even if it were true, however, this wouldn’t make their actions any more heroic than those of any other band of armed robbers.

The Fifth Amendment dictates that government may not deprive any individual of his property “without due process of law”; one has to be convicted of a crime before the state can impose a punishment. At least that’s how things were intended to operate in the old constitutional republic. The degenerate corporate state ruling us today operates in a fashion similar to that of feudal kleptocracies, in which robbers (sometimes called “tax farmers”) were permitted to keep a portion of whatever they stole from the public.

One early specimen of what is now called “forfeiture” was described by British historian Arthur Arnold after he visited 19th century feudal Iran. Arnold observed that government agents were “free to extort all that [they] can get, upon condition of making a certain annual payment to Tehran.” In this fashion, the subjects were “kept in perpetual disorder by the demands of armed men, who plunder under the pretense of [law], and who … are scarcely preferred to robbers.”

This is essentially the same arrangement that emerged from “forfeiture” reform efforts ten years ago. Amid a growing chorus of public outrage over the practice, Congress and various states enacted measures supposedly forbidding police to profit from forfeiture. The Justice Department, however, nullified those laws by permitting police to keep eighty percent of whatever they confiscate in joint operations with the Feds – thereby instituting a scheme remarkably similar to the 19^th Century Iranian feudal system described by Arnold.

While “civil asset forfeiture” is generally described as a valid law enforcement tool, in practice it is undisguised theft. In a detailed investigative series, the Detroit News reported a couple of years ago: “Local law enforcement agencies are raising millions of dollars by seizing private property suspected in crimes, but often without charges being filed — and sometimes even when authorities admit no offense was committed.”

As Republic magazine recently noted (see “The Stasi State Expands,” October 21),
Between 2003 and 2007, Romulus, Michigan witnessed a 118 percent increase in forfeiture revenues despite the fact that there has not been a corresponding increase in criminal activity. Well, make that unofficial criminal activity.

On September 27, Wayne County Prosecutor Kym Worthy announced the arrest and indictment of former Romulus Police Chief Michael St. Andre, his wife, and five detectives, all of whom were accused of using forfeiture proceeds for their personal benefit.  St. Andre was accused of using forfeiture money to buy a tanning salon for his wife. Some of the money was allegedly used to procure the services of prostitutes. Some $40,000 was reportedly spent on alcohol and marijuana.

Police aren’t the only “public servants” who can live the high life thanks to the miracle of asset forfeiture. Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn, to cite one example, drives a customized high-end SUV confiscated from Charles Melvin Fox, who is accused of running a prostitution ring. Buckhorn selected his pimped-out ride from a “forfeiture fleet” – that is, a large collection of autos stolen by police from people either accused of crimes or associated with them – but not yet convicted in court.

Buckhorn insists that the SUV was seized from “someone engaged in criminal activity.” That may or may not be true of Charles Fox. It is unambiguously true of Buckhorn, who – as a politician – belongs to a class of criminals more loathsome than pimps or prostitutes.

Any vice – that is to say, a prohibited activity engaged in by consenting adults – can be turned into a potential revenue bonanza for the political class. This includes not only drug use and prostitution, but gambling, as well.

In 2009, Maryland’s Anne Arundel County Police Department set up a fraudulent account for “Linwood Payment Solutions” to process payments for online gambling. The funds were deposited directly into the federal government’s asset forfeiture fund. Earlier this year, the Feds seized the online domains and other assets of online gambling sites – and smugly instructed Americans who had participated in online gambling, none of whom committed a prosecutable offense, to contact the websites if they wanted to get their funds back.

Those funds, of course, had already been stolen by the Feds. For its role in the heist, the Anne Arundel County Police Department netted a cut of nearly a half-million dollars, which will be used to fund the SWAT teams employed to carry out smash-and-grab invasions under the rubric of the “War on Drugs.”

In addition to the obvious material benefits it provides for opportunistic police and civic officials, the practice of asset forfeiture provides an unaccountable pool of funds that can be used to cover up other forms of official corruption.

Nassau County, New York is burdened with one of the worst and most abusive criminal “justice” systems in the country. The County Police Department’s crime lab has been shut down because of incurable corruption. Thousands of criminal convictions may be tainted because of perjury and evidence tampering on the part of crime lab officials.

Nassau County DA Kathleen Rice has announced that thousands of forensic samples from the lab will have to be re-tested at a cost of nearly a half-million dollars. The expenses will be paid out of the police department’s forfeiture funds.

When asked how much money was in the forfeiture slush funds, Rice refused to answer. The police department – in a fashion typical of the risk-aversive plunderers who gravitate to that disreputable occupation – insists that a public accounting of the forfeiture funds would put officers “at risk.” It’s understandable that the thieves would try to avoid riling up the victims by describing the size of their haul.

No other criminal racket can compete with the one called “government” – and officially sanctioned robbery of this kind grows increasingly common as the productive economy dies.

Read more about this in the Baltimore Sun.