Delaware County

Joy Leiker, writing for the Muncie Star Press, does what seems to be an excellent piece of reporting on the Prosecutor/Drug Task Force/Asset Forfeiture brouhaha that has been embroiling Delaware County politics for the past year or so. I add the qualifier “seems to be” only because I’m not familiar enough with the local politics there to know if there are any gaps or problems.

It starts with discussing the drug task force asset forfeiture program but then goes on to describe the tangled web of personal relationships between the parties involved, including most prominently the prosecutor and the Muncie mayor.

I’ll go ahead and add, that philosophically, I have serious reservations about asset forfeiture laws passed in support of the War on (Some) Drugs. As to Indiana’s laws, specifically, I don’t have anything like comprehensive knowledge, but only know of the process in the country generally. So, don’t take this as a specific critique of the situation in our state. Generally, the potential for abuse is always there when you have law enforcement taking property from a citizen for the benefit of the law enforcement agency with potentially relaxed standards of proof as to whether the property was used in aid of a crime. There should be some fairly significant levels of process when government takes property from a citizen, and, probably more importantly, there should be some serious filters between those who make decisions about seizing property and those who make decisions about how that seized property is allocated. “I can take your stuff and it will make my life and the life of my co-workers better; and besides, you’re a drug dealing scumbag” is a pretty powerful incentive, I would think.