Police Can Just Take Your Money, Car and Other Property — and Good Luck Getting It Back

By Aaron Cantú

June 18, 2014  |  Alda Gentile was driving back home to New York from Florida, after having viewed condos with her son and grandson ahead of a potential move. She had $11,000 in cash with her, which she brought in order to make a deposit on her new place. As she drove through Georgia, she was stopped for speeding, and upon hearing that she was carrying such a large sum of cash (which is legal, by the way), state troopers questioned her on the side of the road for a total of six hours. In the end she was sent on her way—without the cash, which the officers kept.

Gentile’s case is an extreme example, but such occurrences happen on a smaller, broader scale across the country every year. Civil asset forfeiture is one of those arcane statutes you never hear about until it screws you. It’s a legal fiction spun up hundreds of years ago to give the state the power to convict a person’s property of a crime, or at least, implicate its involvement in the committing of a crime. When that happened, the property was to be legally seized by the state.