Homeless in Arizona

Sadly the police in Arizona are some of the most corrupt police officers in the United State.

According to this article

Remarkably, Arizona averages more state forfeiture revenue each year than neighboring California, a state with six times the population. Significantly, California’s civil forfeiture laws are not as lucrative for law enforcement.

Arizona must end “policing for profit”

Paul Avelar and Keith Diggs, Special for The Republic | azcentral.com 12:03 p.m. MST December 3, 2015

If law enforcement suspect that you committed a crime, they can arrest you and put you on trial. At trial, prosecutors must prove you are guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. But if law enforcement suspect your property is linked to a crime, they can seize and try to forfeit it, even if they don’t charge you — or anyone else — with a crime.

If you want your property back, you will have to prove your innocence.

Welcome to the upside-down world of civil forfeiture.

Arizona earns D-

According to Policing for Profit, the Institute for Justice’s new national report card on civil forfeiture, Arizona’s laws are among the very worst in the country, earning a D-.

Arizona forfeiture laws threaten both due process and property rights. They provide a low bar for forfeiture and do not require a criminal conviction — or even criminal charges — before property can be taken.

They also do not protect innocent owners. They actually penalize people who fight back against unjust forfeitures. Warping priorities, Arizona law enforcement get to keep up to 100 percent of what they take.

Civil forfeiture, nationwide and in Arizona, is exploding, fueled by laws that incentivize law enforcement to police for profit. Between 2000 and 2014, Arizona law enforcement reaped nearly $412 million in forfeiture proceeds under state law. Twenty-eight percent of expenditures from those funds, more than $62 million, went to “administrative expenses” like salaries, benefits and overtime.

Arizona has outsized problem

Arizona forfeiture continues to grow faster and faster, from $9.3 million in 2000 to more than $36 million last year.

Remarkably, Arizona averages more state forfeiture revenue each year than neighboring California, a state with six times the population. Significantly, California’s civil forfeiture laws are not as lucrative for law enforcement.

Recent events have again cast light on Arizona’s horrible forfeiture laws. A lawsuit filed by the ACLU against Pinal County officials has shown the ways in which officials use these laws to take property from people never implicated in a crime and then threaten innocent property owners to pay the government’s attorneys’ fees to keep owners from fighting back in court. Officials across the state have used forfeiture proceeds to set up slush funds to pay their own salaries (and even retirement contributions), engage in wasteful spending and for outright giveaways to groups without any public benefit.

Arizona law, however, is not the only problem.

The Institute for Justice found that Arizona law enforcement took in an additional $70 million from 2000 to 2013 using a controversial federal program called “equitable sharing.” By participating in equitable sharing, state and local law enforcement can forfeit property under federal law instead of state law, even if state law is more restrictive.

Congress was expected to advance federal reform to abolish equitable sharing, but it has so far failed to do so. In the meantime, Arizona can and should curtail participation in this abusive program and clean up its own state laws.

Pushing for change

That is why a coalition of local and national organizations from across the political spectrum, including the Institute for Justice, have come together to support forfeiture reform at the Arizona Legislature. Reform in Arizona is desperately needed, and the best reform would be simply to abolish civil forfeiture. No one should lose property without being convicted of a crime, and law enforcement should not profit from taking people’s property.

Paul Avelar and Keith Diggs are attorneys at the Institute for Justice’s Arizona office.