(c) 2014 Brenda Grantland
Truth and Justice Blog, 11/4/2014
In recent months the mainstream news media has rediscovered the abuses of civil asset forfeiture as an issue of concern. On October 11, the Washington Post published an excellent series of articles on forfeiture abuse “Asset seizures fuel police spending.” Other print media have begun jumping on the bandwagon, publishing their own original stories. See the Forfeiture Endangers American Rights Foundation’s website’s What’s New page for summaries of recent forfeiture articles.
Television has rediscovered the forfeiture issue too, with the most hilarious skewering of civil asset forfeiture ever, by John Oliver on Last Week Tonight, on October 5, 2014. Already, as of today, 3,709,577 people have watched the YouTube video of the episode.
We are grateful for all of the bad publicity civil forfeiture is getting and that people are beginning to clamor for reform, but reforming civil forfeiture (again!) will only cure half the problem.
Criminal forfeiture has become even more abusive than civil forfeiture.
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