Coked-Up Cops: asset forfeiture.

• Author: Shackford, Scott
• Position: Citings - Cocaine buy-bust operations - Brief article

Asset forfeiture laws give police officers an incentive to bust people with property to seize. But few have taken this practice as far as the police of Sunrise, Florida, who posed as cocaine suppliers to lure targets into town.

According to the Broward County Sun Sentinel, which exposed the strategy in October, undercover cops and informants arranged to meet potential buyers and middlemen, then busted them, seizing their cash, cars, phones, and jewelry. While local police said they were putting away dangerous drug dealers, the Sun Sentinel found that few of the people arrested through this program lived in the area. Most came from other cities or even other states. And far from capturing major players, the operation mostly nabbed low-level mules or...