The council’s unanimous vote caps more than a year of debate over the department’s use of laws that allowed police officers to take millions of dollars in cash, cars and other property without charging the owners with crimes.
Advocates such as the District’s Public Defender Service said the bill is needed to curb police power and protect working-class property owners. Law enforcement authorities said it would create an administrative burden for the city and affect the department’s budget by reducing seizure revenue.
“It defangs the government’s ability to take money, cars and other assets with little to no due process,” D.C. Council member Tommy Wells (D-Ward 6), chairman of the Committee on the Judiciary and Public Safety, said in an interview. “We now have a model, I believe, for the country to follow.”
The council is set to take a second and final vote on Dec. 2.
Wells said a Washington Post series about civil asset forfeiture provided an impetus for the bill’s approval. The Post articles in September showed that more than $2.5 billion in cash had been seized under federal law from almost 62,000 people across the country since Sept. 11, 2001, without warrants or indictments.
On Sunday, The Post reported that D.C. police have made more than 12,000 seizures under city and federal laws since 2009, according to records and data obtained through the District’s open-records law. Half of the more than $5.5 million in cash seizures involved $141 or less, with more than 1,000 involving less than $20. D.C. police have seized more than 1,000 cars, some for minor offenses allegedly committed by the children or friends of the vehicles’ owners, documents show.
The Civil Asset Forfeiture Amendment Act of 2014 aims to cut back on such seizures through a host of administrative changes. It requires the District to inventory everything that is taken and notify the owners. Each notice must explain how to challenge the forfeitures and provide directions on how to retrieve property that was seized.
Car owners would have the right to drive their vehicles pending final forfeiture action, and people whose cash had been seized could appeal if the money was urgently needed to pay for food or rent.
The bill would also eliminate a requirement that property owners post a bond of up to $2,500 or 10 percent of the value of the property before they could appeal.
The bill would effectively end the District’s involvement with a federal asset forfeiture program at the Justice Department called Equitable Sharing. Under the program, police agencies that make seizures under federal law can keep up to 80 percent of the proceeds, but only if the money goes toward a law enforcement purpose. The bill requires any proceeds from seizures to go into the city’s general fund.
