By David Gordon
For the Chippewa Valley Post
Civil asset forfeiture laws and the challenges facing ex-prisoners as they try to re-enter the larger society were both on Chris Ahmuty’s agenda during his visit to Eau Claire last week.
Ahmuty, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Wisconsin, was part of a six-person panel Wednesday night (Oct. 28) at the Unitarian Universalist Congregation, 421 S. Farwell St. Some 40 people attended the discussion of “Life After Incarceration: Re-Entering Community,” which was co-sponsored by Joining Our Neighbors, Advancing Hope (JONAH) and which also took note of Wisconsin’s large prison population (about twice as large as the Minnesota total).
The following evening, the Wisconsin ACLU and the Wisconsin GrandSons of Liberty co-sponsored a program that explored the current civil asset forfeiture (CAF) statutes that allow law enforcement authorities to seize property without charging the owner with a crime. The town-hall type program was held at the Volume One Gallery, 205 N. Dewey St.
In an interview with the Chippewa Valley Post between the two programs, Ahmuty said that the state ACLU’s agenda includes both topics, although its greatest current concern is police misconduct and racial profiling by the police. He noted that people have begun to question police actions more frequently since the Ferguson, MO killing of an African-American teenager by local police in August, 2014.
He said that mass incarceration results in budget problems, an issue that has also attracted the attention of the Koch brothers. Ahmuty said that “we’ve got to figure out a way to be smart about it,” and noted that in addition to the costs involved. the prison population reflects racial disparities.
He said that current misuse of civil asset forfeiture laws has produced criticism from across the political spectrum and noted that a proposed statutory reform in Wisconsin has drawn bipartisan support in the Legislature. Law enforcement officials now must meet a very low standard to seize property – “probable cause” to believe it may have been used in committing a crime – and owners must prove it was not involved in criminal activity in order to reclaim it.
Ahmuty said it is difficult for individuals to contest CAF seizures unless they hire a lawyer. Even with a lawyer, the legal challenges are difficult to overcome if no charges are filed against the property owner, he said.
He noted that the costs of resisting the seizure can often be more than the value of the seized property, and added that there appear to be communities where the police are using this process as a means of generating revenue for their departments. Sometimes that revenue is used for legitimate law enforcement purposes, he said, but he also cited a situation where it was used to purchase high-end gym equipment for an exercise room reserved for top police commanders.
“CAF perverts the criminal justice system” in Wisconsin because the police get to keep the proceeds from selling the seized property, Ahmuty said. “We must change this perverse incentive,” at least by requiring that the proceeds go elsewhere – perhaps to schools, as is the trend nationally.
Ahmuty said that the roots of CAF go back to medieval England and that it was heavily used against suspected drug dealers in the late 20th century war on drugs. He noted that the ACLU is interested in this issue from “due process and equal protection of the laws” perspective, while the GrandSons of Liberty (GoL) approaches it as a property rights issue.
Despite their very different ideological stances, the two organizations have presented several previous joint programs on this topic, in the Milwaukee area and DePere. Ahmuty said the collaboration started with a phone call to him from Larry Gamble of the GoL, who had seen a news story about similar cooperative efforts in Florida.
Ahmuty said the ACLU was interested in extending that cooperation to Wisconsin because it is “willing to be pragmatic and try to accomplish something.”
The GrandSons of Liberty website (http://www.wisconsingrandsonsofliberty.com/) states that the organization believes the United States is “suffering from excessive, overbearing, out-of-control government at all levels, intolerable taxation (without real representation). . . and a disastrous decline into the nightmare of socialism.”