TheAgitator.com
St. Louis Cops Turn Forfeiture Policy Into Free Car Rental Service
Monday, July 21st, 2008Seems that the city of St. Louis, like many cities, allows the police to confiscate the cars of people suspected (but not necessarily convicted) of certain crimes. They have a contract with a city towing firm, and said firm was allowing police officers and their families to "rent" confiscated cars free of charge, sometimes for months on end. Officers and their families could also sometimes purchase the confiscated cars at a fraction of the cars’ value.
All of that is pretty outrageous. But it gets better. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch stumbled onto the story after investigating the daughter of the city’s police chief. She had been involved in a number of accidents with different cars. On several occasions she had wrecked a car, then simply gone down to the towing service to get a 60-80 percent discount on a new one. After one accident, her blood-alcohol concentration tested at .17. She wasn’t arrested or charged. The department says it has "no idea" why she was let go.
The police department hired a law firm, which concluded that the towing arrangement broke no rules or laws. The chief improbably claims he was oblivious to the deals his daughter was getting (her relationship with the towing service apparently goes back to 2002). The Post-Dispatch reports that the chief’s last public statement on the matter was that, "the absolute necessity in maintaining transparency in the eyes of the public."
He has since declined to comment.
Civil asset forfeiture is an ongoing outrage. The distinction between CAF and theft seems to come down to “there is an expensive process whereby the victim can possibly regain his property.”
I haven’t seen any movement on this in a long time, though there was once a fairly high-level bi-partisan effort to reform the system (from then-House majority leader Republican Henry Hyde and Democrat John Conyers - reading Hyde’s 1995 _Forfeiting Our Property Rights_ is what made me aware of how widespread the problem is).
It seems like the obvious approach should be to remove the “in rem” aspect of the process. That is, maybe there is legitimate cause for LE to seize property that is a result of direct profit from criminal activity. But, that seizure must be absolutely contingent on the property owner being convicted of the crime which lead to the profit. Otherwise legal property cannot initially be seized without making an arrest and cannot be held for more than a few days without an indictment. (Even then, there has to be a reasonable time limit on - and hardship remedy for - seizures where the owner won’t go to trial for a long time.) Finally, no conviction means the property must be returned and reasonable compensation made for damages and lost income directly resulting from the seizure, withOUT the owner needing to sue the government to get it.
If they do this openly,how much in drugs and cash are going out the back door?Easy access to the property of others is a huge temptation.
If you are going to make a freebooter force out of the police, why not just go all the way?
I just wanted to say that I am officially at police outrage fatigue. This story prompted no emotional/visceral reaction from me whatsoever.
Ahh, but China, who has just signed the private property protection act into law, is the communist country…right…
A careful read of the underlying article shows that, oddly, the entity which is quoted as most critical of the chief is the police officer association (although as part of their own denial of wrongdoing). This complicates the story. An otherwise inexplicable factoid mentioned early on in the article: the current chief was given after two “veteran officers” were bypassed.
A bit of Googling shows that the daughter in question is facing “unrelated” charges for having stolen valuables and a credit card from her mother & stepfather, as well as drug and child endangerment.
The more complicated story, which the article only hints at, is probably something like this:
- Daughter exploited apparent connection to dad to get cheap cars to finance drug habit; police chief dad not told.
- Police chief dad learns about this at some point, tries to cover it up.
- When the full horror of the situation is exposed, police chief dad gets thrown under the bus by resentful fellow officers.
- Reflexive police “courtesy” (corruption) nevertheless had previously led to no charges for daughter on DUI.
So the net-net: it probably wasn’t a straight-up bribe, it was likely a shakedown by the daughter under the apparent authority of dad, but it was facilitated by a pervasive atmosphere of “back scratching” corruption.
Still not a pretty picture.
BTW, accidentally called Hyde the House majority leader, when I meant to say he was the chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (and Conyers was, I think, the ranking Democrat). When I followed the issue at the time, it seemed like nearly all the opposition to reform was from police organizations.
I have to agree with Phelps that there is such an obvious set of perverse incentives and lure to corruption (the police gets to keep what it takes from citizens) that it irks me there is almost no awareness of this as an issue.
Here is the St Louis Post Dispatch latest:
http://www.stltoday.com/stltoday/news/stories.nsf/stlouiscitycounty/story/0A9D35B488018A768625748E0014C436?OpenDocument
All the from the PD that also brought us the World Series Ticket scandle.
The city posted my street for repairs on Saturday and towed all the cars on Sunday. I was away for the weekend and came back to find my car gone. When I complained, the street department explained if they posted signs with a reasonable advance notice, the sign would be removed by vandals (this wasn’t a poor neighborhood). When I went to pickup my car the charge was around $200. I wrote on my check that I was paying under protest, they refused to take the check so I wrote another check without the comment.
The city goverment in St. Louis is a complete mess. The rule of law barely exists and honest decent people basically avoid involvement. I moved to Madison Wisconsin and am much happier.