State report shows Minnesota cops profiting less and less from asset forfeiture

Oct. 7—ROCHESTER — Law enforcement agencies in Southeast Minnesota followed a five-year statewide trend of lowering net profits from asset forfeitures, according to a new report from the Minnesota State Auditor's Office.

Net proceeds from the seizures totaled more than $6.6 million statewide, with the Rochester Police Department accounting for a fraction of that, with around $12,000 reported net proceeds. Total completed forfeitures have fallen from 8,091 in 2018 to 5,280 in 2022. Seizures also decreased by 15% from 2021 to 2022.

"We are interested to see if that (trend) will continue," Minnesota State Auditor Julie Blaha said during a Sept. 28, 2023, press conference. She noted the data her office collects is when a seizure has completed its path through the system, so while she expects a continued downward trend, there may be blips in the reporting that are still accounting for recent legislation passed.

Asset forfeiture, the government confiscation of assets believed to be used during illicit activities, is a profoundly unpopular government money-making scheme in the United States. A 2016 poll by the Cato Institute, a libertarian think tank based in Washington D.C., found

84% of Americans polled opposed the practice.

Questions about its application have also been raised, with

Black residents representing 67% of those who had property seized in Philadelphia from 2012 to 2018,

according to a 2021 survey of Philadelphia residents affected by asset forfeiture. Currently, Minnesota does not track the race of those who have had assets seized by law enforcement agencies at a statewide level.

Minnesota first began reforming asset forfeiture in 2021. The state put a $1,500 threshold on money seized in connection to suspected drug-related seizures or required that it must be found in close proximity to controlled substances and there is probable cause to believe it was exchanged in an illegal drug sale. New reporting requirements were also put in place on law enforcement and prosecutor offices. These reforms were partly pushed by Blaha's office in 2020,

when she criticized small-budget seizures.

The asset forfeiture reform law

had bipartisan support in Minnesota.

While the asset forfeiture reform movement is due in part to its unpopularity and questionable effectiveness, it is hard to ignore that money from seizures is simply a drop in the bucket for law enforcement budgets when agencies have restrictions placed on them.

For example, RPD received over $32 million dollars from the city for its 2023 budget. Even taking into account

last year's haul of over $100,000 from seized assets,

the amount taken is essentially a nonfactor in what the department can afford to do.

The biggest push so far has been to reduce small forfeitures,

which has been shown to have little to no impact on crime rates,

according to the Institute of Justice, a Virginia-based nonprofit law firm that focuses on civil liberties.

"Forfeiture doesn't have a high level of system impact, which means it's a great place to look at reform," Blaha said. "It's something the system can absolutely handle."

Asset forfeiture became popular among law enforcement agencies in the early 1970s as part of the nation's War on Drugs, which itself has been questioned regarding the effectiveness of prohibition and the amount of money spent. The nation has shelled out about a

trillion dollars in its five-decade-long drug prohibition battle.

In 1971, the Minnesota Legislature first passed legislation that allowed law enforcement to seize property related to illegal drug possession. Over the next several decades, Minnesota lawmakers expanded law enforcement's ability to seize property from those suspected of a crime while also requiring stricter reporting requirements.

The most common alleged criminal activity associated with statewide seizures involved controlled substance offenses in 2022. Those amounted to 44% of seizures, while driving under the influence totaled 39%.

For RPD, all 22 of their reported seizures in 2022 were of vehicles related to DUIs or controlled substance violations. Compare this to 2021 when the department reported 73 seizures involving drugs are impaired driving with 24 of those being cash seizures kept by the department.

The number of total seizures dropping may be attributed to a 2019 Minnesota statute that bars police or prosecutors from selling seized property in alleged DUI cases if the owner agrees to use an ignition interlock system, according to Blaha.

Those new reporting requirements, including forcing agencies to disclose where money from seized assets is spent, created some new hiccups for law enforcement agencies around the state, according to Christy John, an accounting officer with the Minnesota State Auditor's Office.

The auditor's office had to set up an entirely new online form for agencies to fill out, she said, and some agencies had to work with their financial department to start tracking this new reporting requirement.

"They are now used to the fact that they have to report it," John said. "So now it will be easy for them in the coming year."

For RPD, $24,000 obtained through selling seized property was spent on crime prevention and $9,980 was spent on investigation costs in 2022, according to the report.

Blaha credited stakeholders, including legislators, civil rights groups, law enforcement and prosecutors with making an easy transition to the new reporting obligations.

And if any agencies were upset about those new requirements, she would not know because her office did not face any sort of pushback, she said.

"If they're going to have that concern, I think they're more likely to share that with a legislator or share that with the people who came to that decision," Blaha said. "They don't come after the messenger on this stuff, so we've been lucky that way."

Blaha expects forfeiture numbers to continue to decline in the coming years, saying that the 2021 reforms are yet to be truly reflected in the numbers.

"At a minimum, a plateau but there's a lot of factors that could change that," Blaha said, adding that we'll start to see the impact of marijuana legalization next year, as well, reflected in the 2024 report.

"A lot of people were working together to make this happen," she said. "I think you could argue that their efforts are getting the results they were hoping for."