CSPAN - Rep. Issa Talks Civil Forfeiture With Washington Journal's Greta Brawner

Interview

This morning Congressman Darrell Issa stopped by Washington Journal on CSPAN to talk about criminal justice reform and the growing need for congress to move on civil asset forfeiture reform.

In the interview Congressman Issa said:

"[Civil forfeiture] can be highway robbery at times. It allows law enforcement based on their suspicion that something is being used in a crime with no arrest and no probable cause in some cases … for police to simply say I'm going to take your cash. … I think the most egregious part of this, with the exception of a few states like California, [law enforcement] never have to bring a charge against you in order to keep your assets. Wait a second… where's my presumption of innocence and where is my personal property?"

"We need to do a couple things … we need to put safeguards in so that police abuses are quickly stemmed. We need to make sure that the person who feels that they had money wrongfully taken away, starts off with a quick remedy to get it back that doesn't cost them a fortune. And we need to take away the incentive for these funds to always end up benefiting the entity taking it."

"I don't want to disparage law enforcement because these laws are being used properly most of the time. The problem is: "most of the time' isn't good enough when it's your civil rights."

"We have a bipartisan group working on criminal justice reform -- Jim Sensenbrenner heads a lot of it -- and this is part of criminal justice reform. This is a program that needs to be fixed federally and hopefully the states will follow."

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