Police seized $68.8 billion in assets from Americans — most never charged with a crime — and it now exceeds all burglary losses combined

When civil rights advocates first raised alarms about police seizing cash and property from citizens without formal charges, skeptics dismissed it as exaggeration. They said it was a fringe problem, limited to a few bad actors. The Institute for Justice and journalists investigating the practice knew better.

The claim was straightforward but difficult to fathom: American law enforcement had seized more assets through civil forfeiture than burglars had stolen in a single year. By 2014, according to Washington Post reporting, police took approximately $5.1 billion in property compared to roughly $3.9 billion lost to burglary. The gap has only widened since.

For decades, the official position from law enforcement agencies and some government officials was that civil asset forfeiture was a necessary tool to combat drug trafficking and organized crime. Proponents argued it disrupted criminal enterprises by targeting their financial infrastructure. The system was portrayed as a precision instrument, used only against genuine wrongdoers. Few questioned whether it was being abused at scale.

But the numbers told a different story. According to the Institute for Justice's comprehensive research, the federal government alone seized $68.8 billion in assets since 2000. The Washington Post's investigation revealed that law enforcement agencies across the country were using forfeiture less as a targeted anti-crime measure and more as a revenue generator. Traffic stops in rural areas, small-scale cash seizures, and property confiscations became routine.

What made the claim particularly damning was the documentation of how the system operated in practice. The DOJ's Equitable Sharing Program allowed local police departments to bypass their own state's restrictions on forfeiture by partnering with federal agencies. This meant that if a state legislature restricted the practice, police could simply work with federal partners and split the proceeds. A driver carrying cash could have their money seized on suspicion alone—suspicion that never resulted in charges.