By Kayode Crown
Seven years ago, deputy sheriffs ransacked Greg and Theresa Almond’s home in Randolph County and found $50 worth of marijuana.
The couple said the weed wasn’t theirs, but that did not stop the deputies from putting them in jail and seizing thousands of dollars’ worth of cash and other property. They eventually lost their home because they missed a bank meeting for mortgage refinancing.
Last year, a federal jury determined that the sheriffs did not obtain court authorization before their search and awarded the couple $1 million in damages.
What happened to the Almonds is featured in a new report by the Southern Poverty Law Center that calls for Alabama to break from a past of abuses and excesses in civil asset forfeiture, the process through which police seize and keep property they suspect of being linked to criminal activity.
The Montgomery-based SPLC says Alabama needs more detailed reporting when police seize cars, guns, money and other property through asset forfeiture.
“Free, comprehensive, and open data would be an important deterrent to future policing-for-profit schemes in Alabama,” the SPLC said in the report titled “Ending Business as Usual: The Need for Alabama Civil Asset Forfeiture Data Transparency.”
Since Alabama in 2019 began requiring police to disclose what they seize, the data shows a sharp overall decline in cases opened, and in the number of cars, guns and cash seized.
But, the SPLC report, based on asset forfeiture reporting by the government from 2020 to 2023, notes that the judicial circuits in counties with populations of more than 30% Black residents saw law enforcement seizing 42.6% more money in 2023 compared with 2021. At the same time, there was a decrease in cash seizures in judicial circuits with a higher share of white residents.
The organization said the summary nature of the released reports leaves unanswered questions.
“Importantly, Alabama should require disaggregated civil asset forfeiture data to be made fully accessible to the public, which would create an additional level of accountability for law enforcement to ensure its reporting is complete and accurate,” the report, written by Delvin Davis, SPLC senior policy analyst, said.
State data between 2020 and 2024 reviewed by AL.com shows that no one was ever arrested in nearly half of the cases, about 45%.
The SPLC report said this detail challenges the idea that civil asset forfeiture is needed to fight big-time drug traffickers.
“These low arrest rates counter the narrative that civil asset forfeitures are necessary for disrupting criminal enterprises,” the SPLC said.
In civil asset forfeiture cases, police can seize property suspected of being the proceeds of crime or used in the commission of crimes.
They can seize cars, guns and cash even without charging anyone, and the owners lack access to court-appointed attorneys to fight to get their property back.
Police or prosecutors keep the proceeds — a practice long criticized by reform advocates as constituting a perverse incentive.
Five years of available data shows that Alabama police opened 5,964 cases and seized $38 million, 1,035 cars, and 3,469 guns.
The data from the Alabama Justice Information Commission contain summaries of forfeiture activities across law enforcement agencies in the state.
They show that seizures of cash and guns, along with the filing of new criminal cases, peaked in 2021.
Since then, following increased scrutiny and policy changes, these seizures have dropped dramatically.
New cases fell by more than 40% from 2021 to 2024. Gun seizures declined by over a third since 2021. Car seizures saw the sharpest decline, falling 47% from 291 in 2020 to 154 in 2024.
Jerome Dees, Alabama policy director for SPLC, cautions against drawing conclusions that asset forfeitures are trending downward in all areas.
He noted that cash seizures nearly doubled from $5.1 million in 2022 to $9.4 million in 2023 and believes it’s important to know how many seizures are linked to criminal cases and the value of each of those seizures in forfeiture cases that are opened.
“Those are the questions that remain because we just don’t have published data around that, and so it prevents the public from being able to access and assess that information,” Dees told AL.com.
Some in law enforcement have long defended civil asset forfeiture as necessary to fight crime and resisted calls for abolishing the practice. But a measure of change came in 2019.
In February of that year, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a drug-related forfeiture case that the Constitution bars “excessive fines” and limits what the police can seize.
Days later, the Alabama District Attorneys Association launched the Alabama Forfeiture Accountability System for compiling and releasing asset forfeiture information.
The Legislature codified this system beginning Oct. 1, 2019, making Alabama the 23rd state to require the police to report how much property they seize. The reports show a reduction in asset forfeiture numbers since then.
In interviews with AL.com, stakeholders suggested the decline could be attributed to various factors, including police fear of public scrutiny, the new reporting requirement, and a 2021 law that strengthened the claim of property owners who had nothing to do with the alleged crime.
The 2021 law stated that police shouldn’t seize cash less than $250 and cars valued at less than $5,000 and that seizures shouldn’t be disproportionate to the crime.
“Maybe it’s not as lucrative as it used to be,” said State Sen. Arthur Orr of Decatur concerning the decline in forfeitures. Orr was the lead sponsor of the asset forfeiture laws in 2019 and 2021.
“Or do we have towns like Brookside that decided they don’t want to be found out and they would prefer just to be very cautious before they pursue a forfeiture action because they don’t want to have an inordinate amount of forfeitures in their town, and it might lead to some attention they don’t want?” Orr added.
A 2022 AL.com investigation revealed that police in Brookside, a town of 1,200 residents just north of Birmingham, in 2020, generated nearly half the town’s revenue from fines and forfeitures. Months after the AL.com investigation, the state legislature passed new laws, including one that prohibit cities and towns from retaining money from traffic fines in amounts more than 10 percent of their general operating budgets.
The five-year statewide forfeiture data shows that Brookside Police Department’s cash seizures dropped sharply from $45,678 in 2020 and $18,654 in 2021 to none in 2022 and 2023. The police department is not featured at all in the latest 2024 report. The police chief didn’t respond to AL.com’s request for comment.
Law enforcement personnel shared varying perspectives on the reporting requirement’s effect. CJ Robinson, the district attorney for Autauga, Chilton, and Elmore counties, wrote in an email to AL.com that requiring law enforcement to file reports limits forfeiture actions.
“Some agencies have opted not to pursue asset forfeitures at the rate they once did, citing the increased reporting as a procedural deterrent,” he stated.
Derrick Cunningham, the sheriff of Montgomery County, has a similar view.
“Probably some of the smaller agencies that don’t have the personnel dedicated to do that type of paperwork, they may have to restructure the way that they do business,” he said.
The data shows that while 99 police departments filed asset forfeiture reports in 2021, the number dropped to 71 in 2023 and 2024. Meanwhile, sheriff offices and joint drug task forces, which bring together different agencies, remained stable.
“If you don’t have people that can multitask, it will slow down that process,” Cunningham added. “It doesn’t take much, (but) if you’re doing a forfeiture, you’ve got to have somebody that’s just going to be doing the paperwork.”
Limestone County district attorney Brian Jones said he fills in the information in about 10 minutes.
“It’s not a big deal,” he said.
Reporting requirements shouldn’t discourage legitimate seizures, according to Orr.
“These very simplistic and easily answered data points should not deter district attorneys and law enforcement from taking the ill-gotten gains of criminals if they deem it worthwhile pursuing,” the state senator said.
Over five years, judges automatically ruled in favor of the state in 2,329 cases, or 39%, because the property owners didn’t appear in court.
“The high rate of default judgments is important given that the expense of hiring an attorney could make it cost-prohibitive to pursue reclaiming a small amount of cash or low-value property,” the SPLC said in its report.
Though the overall yearly number of cases declined, the proportion of default judgments rose sharply from 30.9% in 2020 to 47.9% in 2024.
As car seizures dipped slightly from 291 to 285 in 2021, three other metrics – new cases, cash seized, and gun seized – peaked that year.
New cases dropped 42.9% from 1,667 in 2021 to 952 in 2024; gun seizures fell 37% from 877 in 2021 to 550 in 2024.
Cash seizures showed more volatility — plunging 55% from $11.5 million in 2021 to $5.1 million in 2022 before rising to $9.4 million in 2023, and to a five-year low of $4.38 million in 2024. All data reflects fiscal years (October-September), labeled by ending year.
According to the law, agencies must document the seized property’s type and description; seizure date; law enforcement agency; underlying criminal activity; any date of arrest and the charges; case number; property claimants; property disposition; date of disposal order; and all entities receiving portions of the seized property or proceeds. But the yearly report only contains summaries.
Orr, who said he’s poised to file legislation this year to expand reporting requirements, questioned forfeitures without criminal charges.
“It’s very important that we have the criminal activity to justify the forfeiture of someone’s personal goods or goods that they may be traveling with or having on their person,” he said.
“Because in Alabama, we have had some jurisdictions, a vast minority, just a few, that have abused the law and just started taking people’s stuff, no charges whatsoever,” he added “They just pull them over and see a gun, it’s ‘you can’t have that gun, give it to me.’ That’s several years ago and that’s extreme, but we don’t need law enforcement shaking people down and taking their things.”
Dan Alban, the co-director of the National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse under the auspices of the Institute for Justice, says the state needs more law changes.
“There’s still a strong need for reform,” said the IJ executive, who indicated that the 2021 law increasing seizure thresholds is a possible reason for reduced forfeiture numbers.
“Sounds like roughly 1,000 cases a year, and that’s 1,000 people in Alabama being affected by these very unjust laws, and while Alabama has passed a couple of sort of small reforms in 2019 and in 2021, I think the reforms haven’t gone far enough,” Alban said.
“There’s still a large profit incentive,” he added. “The law enforcement gets to keep the proceeds of forfeiture still in Alabama and that’s what drives this sort of predatory behavior that we see with civil forfeiture.”
Alban calls for ending civil asset forfeiture and only seizing property as part of a criminal proceeding.
That means the government would have to prove people committed a crime before taking their stuff, including houses, which do not have a separate category in the reports, just cash, guns, cars, and the rest classified as others.
“So the gold standard that we recommend is ending civil forfeiture and replacing it with criminal forfeiture,” Alban said, pointing at Nebraska, North Carolina, Maine, and New Mexico as examples.
In response to arguments that stopping civil asset forfeiture will lead to increased crime, he referenced the result of a study released in November about what happened in New Mexico after the state ended the practice 10 years ago.
The study used federal crime statistics from New Mexico and neighboring states and “did not find sufficient evidence to conclude civil forfeiture effectively fights crime,” the researchers wrote.
But, Lyle Harmon, the district attorney for St. Clair County, defended civil asset forfeiture as a law enforcement tool.
“…while separate from criminal prosecutions, the ability to file for civil forfeitures of narcotics and the associated funds that are proceeds of the drug trade is a necessary and valuable tool to fight this never-ending battle,” he said.
Alban disagrees and notes law enforcement thinks asset forfeiture is a crime-fighting tool because they keep the proceeds from everything they claim through forfeiture.
“So they have a strong financial incentive to support civil forfeiture, and you see that across the country,” he said. “The only advocates of civil forfeiture and the only opponents of civil reform are in law enforcement, so, of course, they support it. They profit from it.”
The SPLC’s recommendations include increasing data “availability, accuracy and transparency” because of “perverse financial incentives and potential harm to vulnerable communities caused by the process in the state.”
