Despite calls for “defunding” the police or cutting the department’s budget, there exists a money-making scheme used by the New York City Police Department to accumulate millions of dollars in property seized from persons who are arrested. Although denominated “forfeiture” in legal terms as purportedly recapturing the “proceeds” of crime, usually any type of drug offense, “forfeiture,” as a legal judgment, rarely happens.

In actuality, the money is seized, but the process erected by the police property clerk through which the deprived property owner may seek to accomplish its return is so daunting and confusing that most persons without lawyers simply give up in frustration. The seized money then reverts to NYPD possession.

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