How the press exaggerated Eric Holder's civil forfeiture reform

Holder’s order applies only to “adoption,” which happens when a state or local agency seizes property on its own and then asks the Justice Department to pursue forfeiture under federal law. “Over the last six years,” the DOJ says in the press release announcing Holder’s new policy, “adoptions accounted for roughly three percent of the value of forfeitures in the Department of Justice Asset Forfeiture Program.” By comparison, the program’s reports to Congress indicate that “equitable sharing” payments to state and local agencies accounted for about 22 percent of total deposits during those six years. That means adoptions, which the DOJ says represented about 3 percent of deposits, accounted for less than 14 percent of equitable sharing. In other words, something like 86 percent of the loot that state and local law enforcement agencies receive through federal forfeitures will be unaffected by Holder’s new policy.

That is not the impression left by The Washington Post, which broke this story on Friday. “Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. on Friday barred local and state police from using federal law to seize cash, cars and other property without warrants or criminal charges,” the Post reported, saying the new policy “would eliminate virtually all cash and vehicle seizures made by local and state police from the [equitable sharing] program.” The Post did note, deep in the story, that Holder said equitable sharing would continue in cases “where local and federal authorities are collaborating.” But it said “most of the money and property taken under Equitable Sharing since 2008…was not seized in collaboration with federal authorities.”