This past summer, New Mexico’s House Bill 560 took effect. The idea was to begin putting nails in the coffin of the egregious practice of civil asset forfeiture. It’s a classic tactic for politician types to talk really loudly about our law enforcement agencies and then completely underfund them—creating a situation where civil asset forfeiture feels essential to law enforcement. New Mexico’s law enforcement are none too happy about this turn of events since it means a lot less revenue for them and they like their new toys—especially in the never-ending battle against the “War on Drugs: 5,000 years and counting.” Let’s see how the New Mexico police force is dealing with the new law of the land.
Albuquerque police are so confident the city’s DWI seizure program is here to stay the department is seeking to buy land to create a complex to store seized vehicles and be a base of operations for DWI and traffic officers.
Both city and state officials say municipal seizure programs like Albuquerque’s are unaffected by a change to state law this year that prohibited law enforcement agencies from seizing property before a conviction and using the revenue to supplement their budgets.
I think we can all agree the you shouldn’t be driving a car if you’re drunk.
An Albuquerque ordinance calls for police to take the vehicle from anyone arrested on suspicion of a second or subsequent drunken-driving charge or on suspicion of driving on a suspended or revoked license because of a prior DWI.
[emphasizing the feeling of deja vu]
Wait a second there. That sounds a lot like seizing someone’s property based on “suspicion.” Oh, right, it is exactly that. That’s Albuquerque, how about Santa Fe?
“Do you know how many times the word ‘civil’ appears in [House Bill] 560?” Alfred Walker, a Santa Fe assistant city attorney who oversees vehicle forfeitures, asked the crowd of more than 100 at the Santa Fe Community Convention Center. “It appears zero times. It seems to me if you want to pre-empt municipal civil forfeiture acts, you need to say that.”
Thanks, Alfred. Unfortunately, corrupt former Santa Fe Police Sheriff Greg Solano is the only law enforcement person who has seen the error of civil forfeiture’s ways.
“But the DWI forfeiture and other Civil forfeiture programs should end,” he wrote in the email, “and while the legislature has taken some steps to end some civil forfeitures they need to go further and end the DWI forfeiture programs as well.”
Not unlike Alfred Walker, Rio Rancho’s Jennifer Walker loves platitudes as well.
“I’ve never considered the value of a vehicle at all,” Rio Rancho’s city attorney, Jennifer Vega-Brown, told the group during a presentation on the elements of a vehicle forfeiture ordinance.
Vega-Brown agreed with Walker about the new state law. “If it was their intention to do away with civil forfeitures, it would have been stated,” she said. “It’s not stated at all.”
People like Vega-Brown and Alfred Walker are fighting the idea that car seizing in city ordinances is the same as civil asset forfeiture—but we kind of all know they’re full of it. Frankly, they’re misleading in how they characterize the bill, and in doing so, show that they are possibly dumb or ignorant or liars. All three of those choices should disqualify them from their present positions. Brad Cates served in the state legislature. He says there are a lot more sections to the bill than the front page, so to speak.
“We just tried to catch all the civil forfeitures we could find, but they’re not like in one place in New Mexico statutes,” he said. “They’re here and there, and it wasn’t precisely clear. I mean, we did the best we could. But we thought, ‘What if we miss some?’ So, we just said, ‘This covers all of them.’ That seemed the catch-all way to fix it.”
In retrospect, he added, “We probably should’ve elaborated more on the cars, but we didn’t think about it.”
Old habits are hard to break. Especially ones that get you some easy money with no consequences.