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Since 2009, the year CPD began keeping electronic records of its forfeiture accounts, the department has brought in nearly $72 million in cash and assets through civil forfeiture, keeping nearly $47 million for itself and sending on almost $18 million to the Cook County state's attorney's office and almost $7.2 million to the Illinois State Police, according to our analysis of CPD records.
Such pointless raids were the norm rather than the exception in about a half a dozen ride-alongs on which Atkinson and his crew went. But while the cops found almost no drugs, they did seize $876 through a controversial policing practice known as civil asset forfeiture.
"It gives you a reason to enter the home and almost always there's something you can seize within the home," Atkinson said in an interview with Truthdig. "We've created a for-profit policing system," said Atkinson, the son of a SWAT-team commander. "You're sending SWAT teams into homes, and if they find anything, they get to keep it."
According to Eastern Kentucky University criminologist Peter Kraska, there are 50,000 to 80,000 raids like this per year, up from 3,000 per year in the 1980s. The turning point came in the 1990s with the 1208 program, which authorized the Department of Defense (DOD) to transfer to federal and state police any weaponry and supplies "suitable for use by such agencies in counter-drug activities." The 1208 was expanded into the 1033 Program in 1997, and the new policy gave police the right to asset forfeiture.
Today, 80 percent of SWAT deployments are based on search warrants. Nearly all of those are drug raids, which, according to the movie, yield results about half of the time. The situation is so out of control that in 2014, police seized more private property from ordinary citizens than was stolen by criminals.
Comment: Interesting debate on what the IS flag represents. Here are some clues to the controversy: RELIGIOUS SYMBOLISM AND ISLAM