Alec Karakatsanis Profile picture
Jul 6, 2021 13 tweets 3 min read Read on X
Thread. Have you ever heard of "civil asset forfeiture"? You're never going to think about the police the same way again. (1)
A few years ago, when I was at the public defender's office, my very poor clients kept telling me the same story: they would be walking down the street and DC police would stop them, search them at gunpoint, tell them to open their wallets, and take all the cash they had. (2)
The wildest part? The DC police would then send them a letter saying that, if they wanted to challenge the police taking of their cash, they would need to pay either $250 or 10% of the amount taken, whichever was more! (3)
So, if police took $10 or $20 from someone, the person would need to pay $250 to even have the right to challenge the cops in court. If you couldn't pay, the cops kept your money. (4)
If you challenged them in court, you'd have to prove that your property was *not* somehow connected to a crime. Think about how hard that is. (5)
If you still wanted to challenge the DC police, they'd send a lawyer to litigate an entire civil asset forfeiture case against you, and you aren't entitled to a lawyer if you're poor because the cops call it a civil case not a criminal case. You have to fight them alone. (6)
Sure enough, when I examined the DC records, the cops had taken cash from thousands of people, almost entirely Black people. They'd also taken hundreds of cars from people, mostly older women of color. I couldn't find a single example of a person successfully challenging it. (7)
A lot of the time, cops were taking $5 and $30 from extremely poor people who were struggling to meet the basic necessities of life for their children, like buying food and diapers and shoes. (7)
In most places, there is no need for the cops to arrest you with civil forfeiture. There's no need for a conviction. They can just allege that your property is connected to a crime and take it. Then they can keep most of it for fancy weapons and corrupt travel junkets. (8)
To understand the scope of this problem, you should know that cops take more money from people in civil asset forfeiture than all burglaries combined in the U.S. (9) washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2…
The cops at the local, state, and federal levels across the country have taken almost $70 billion in civil forfeiture in the past 20 years! (10) ij.org/press-release/…
When cops ask you for more funding, remember that only 4% of all cop time is spent on what they call "violent crime." Next time they ask for money, remember the kafkaesque abuses at every U.S. police department and ask if cops actually care about safety for everyone. (end)
By the way, here's a great piece from @NewYorker that tells some of the stories of our clients in D.C. newyorker.com/magazine/2013/…

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More from @equalityAlec

Jun 1
Few stories better capture modern policing than this one about a conspiracy of private corporate interests paying off-duty state troopers as part of a "shadow force" to cleanse downtown Nashville of homeless people using metal chains, cages, and violence. Image
It's great to see local news covering issues like this by reporter @JFinleyreports because it helps to expose the vast bulk of what police do: only 4% of their time is spent on "violent" crime, and much of it is done to make people money: wsmv.com/2025/05/29/sha…
But it's vital to understand this is not some egregious "bad apple" conspiracy particular to Tennessee or Nashville. It's important to understand that local policing looks like this in every large U.S. city, regardless of whether Democrats or Republicans are in control.
Read 5 tweets
May 24
THREAD. A lot of attention is rightly going to Medicaid cuts and other very bad things in Trump's bill passed in the House, but there's something that isn't getting attention, that is difficult to find in any news coverage, but that will fundamentally alter life for all of us.
The bill provides $160 billion in border/immigration funding in next 4.5 years. It's hard to describe the unprecedented scope of this, but I'll try: tens of thousands of armed agents in every corner of society are going to be nearly immune from state prosecution or civil suits.
This article describes it more, but I want to focus on a few things. First, when you build infrastructure like this and create new jobs/pensions for right-wing unions, it's hard to ever remove them. A new gestapo could become a permanent feature of life. wola.org/analysis/160-b…
Read 15 tweets
May 12
See if you can spot the difference between the New York Times headline and the article's own description of what actually happened, which will be read by far fewer people. Image
Headline: Police and Brooklyn College Protesters Clash After Pro-Palestinian Rally  Actual facts: The police moved in to make arrests after demonstrators left the college grounds and gathered outside. Officers punched some students and slammed others to the ground.
One of the standard media tropes is the "clash," which leaves casual news consumers with the vague sense that opposing sides were each violent, even though what's often happening is that an unaccountable violent repressive force is brutalizing people complaining about injustice.
It's also worth noting the shameful conduct of university administrators. If you think about what they mean by the word "safety" here the implications are dark and Orwellian for our society. Image
Read 4 tweets
Apr 24
THREAD. I have a chapter about this person in my Copaganda book. He’s considered one of the leading lights among Democratic Party officials. I am sort of open to the idea that we should be a country with a national ID card system and a rule that you're expected to have your papers on you at all times in case your citizenship is challenged.  But if that's what conservatives want, we need to create the card.
At a time of rising authoritarianism, he normalizes the idea of a society where everyone can be questioned and stopped at any time. I cannot begin to describe how dangerous this is.
Too much abhorrent/ignorant to cover on social media, but it's completely ignorant of what is being done with digital IDs in authoritarian India, e.g., and makes assumptions about immigration, "citizenship," and the value of human life that should horrify people of good will.
Read 6 tweets
Apr 21
THREAD. This is one of the more remarkable stories I have seen in my time studying state violence and working in law. But it's also an exercise in propaganda. And it's unbelievable how terrible the U.S. media coverage is. One thing in particular is important to see. headling: Bukele proposes deal that would free deported venezueans.
Background: this follows up on U.S. kidnapping people, rushing them onto planes as courts tried to stop it, and then defying court orders, with White House taunting courts and elected officials about how a person they agree was wrongly trafficked will never be coming back.
The kidnapping people off the street and then sending them to a prison (for life?) in a foreign country with no due process and without any law permitting indefinite detention--and then defying court orders--would be enough to end the U.S. legal system as we know it.
Read 18 tweets
Apr 17
THREAD. As authoritarianism rises, people still don't know the story of what Democrats and news outlets did after the fake shoplifting epidemic: created one of the most alarming expansions of surveillance in modern times. The details of what Democrats + cops did will shock you.
First, as I explain in my new book Copaganda, everyone now acknowledges the "retail theft" and "shoplifting" epidemic was fake. Shoplifting was not up--it was **down.** And property crime at historic lows. It was entirely a fabrication. But why?
The companies had their own reasons--distracting from the real reasons they were closing stories, lobbying for various crackdowns on online commerce, and socializing the costs of security to the public so they could cut costs. But the real story is the police.
Read 8 tweets

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