“We go after the assets of these criminal organizations, and it hurts them a lot worse than just taking them to jail.”
Asset forfeiture laws are making headlines once again.
Kansas Judiciary Committee members are awaiting input from an advisory committee before drafting any new policy regarding the law that allows law enforcement to seize and forfeit citizens’ property.
Tony Wolf, Geary County Sheriff, said that everyone “has this big misconception about asset forfeiture”.
“The asset forfeiture laws in this country have been around for 200 years, now if they were found to be in violation of the 4th Amendment then I think someone would have changed a lot of stuff between now and then,” said Wolf. “It’s an extra tool in the arsenal that we can use to hit these drug dealers where it hurts, and that’s right in the pocketbook; I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again that it is a lot like fighting terrorism, you hear the people in Washington, D.C. and they always talk about going after their assets and their funds…this is no different.”
Critics of the laws say the practice violates due process rights by allowing law enforcement to seize property from potentially innocent citizens.
Wolf said that’s misleading. “This is not something that we go out and we just find something and we take it – it does not work like that and [they] want you to believe that kind of stuff…you don’t ever hear the other side of the story…in [their] description a little league coach and real pillar of the community got their property seized, well you don’t hear why they were involved with the police in the first place and 99.9% of the time, they are involved in some type of criminal activity.”
Asset forfeiture is known to be a benefit to law enforcement, but it is also beneficial to the community.
“Once we are awarded [this] by a judge, through the court system which again completely debunks their due process theory, we can then spend this on things that we need that normally we could not afford,” said Wolf. “I buy cars for the department through asset forfeiture, I was able to upgrade the fleet of cars that I have because of asset forfeiture and I can’t expect the taxpayer to pay that.”
Wolf said that the money also helps keep Deputies up to date in training. “Recently I had a Deputy attend classes on Forensic Computer Analysis – that’s $30,000 for that training; you know I couldn’t do that within our regular budget that we have, so this is a big boost to help us get the tools that we need to pursue the criminal element even better.”
Everything from computer systems to bullet proof vests, cars and training were afforded to the Sheriff’s Department; Wolf reiterated that without asset forfeiture these expenses fall on taxpayers.