WHAT IS POLICING FOR PROFIT?

HOW DOES IT IMPACT PUBLIC SAFETY?

Michigan Moms United compiles crime arrest statistics to show, in no uncertain terms, how the practice of policing for profit decreases public safety. 

Rather than investigate and arrest suspects who commit violent crimes such as rape, murder, assault, and robbery, Michigan police and prosecutors focus efforts on consensual, victimless crimes. Why? Because doing so brings much-needed funding to cash-strapped law enforcement agencies. 

Maryland, Montana, New Mexico and Washington D.C. have enacted comprehensive forfeiture reforms, by Michigan law enforcement have prevented substantial reforms. More on this issue in a future blog.

Here’s how policing for-profit works. The federal government provides grants to drug task forces to “go get drugs,” but does not give grants to detectives who work to find murderers or rapists. Civil asset forfeiture laws allow cops and prosecutors to forfeit cash, assets, and property of anyone accused of drug or prostitution crimes. They don’t have to obtain a conviction or prove in any way the defendant was committing a crime. Local law enforcers also keep all proceeds, sharing with federal agencies.

Quote

This combination of free money with no consequences fosters a generations-long dependence on forfeiture and grant dollars in most, if not every, local Michigan police force. This dependency dictates enforcement to areas of profit, mostly drug and prostitution consensual “crimes” rather than violent crimes with actual victims. 

By now everyone knows about the over 11,000 long-forgotten rape kits found in an abandoned Detroit building. Police cannot forfeit anything from rapists. Considering the Michigan State Police Crime Lab admits marijuana testing accounts for 40% of its workload, we can safely assert it’s much safer to live in Michigan if you’re a rapist than a medical marijuana registry participant.

The warrants executed in search of forfeiture often violate the civil rights of Michigan families who have no criminal intent and do so in the form of excessive force, sexual harassment and child endangerment. Here's just one example, the Shattuck family in St. Clair County, which is the subject of a civil rights violations lawsuit from the Law Office Of Michael Komorn. 

The numbers below are statewide arrest rates and as you can see, they do not change much from year to year. It’s time we take public safety seriously, face the ugly truth about policing for profit and begin to heal relations between communities and police.

Michigan Moms United calls on the Michigan Legislature to substantially reform our civil asset forfeiture laws, eliminate policing for profit and require law enforcers to increase arrest rates for violent crimes.

Michigan Moms United has interviewed hundreds of Michigan families eviscerated by both these unjust laws and the SWAT raids used to ransack their homes and businesses in search of forfeiture.

We work to educate the media and legislature about how the failed drug war decreases public safety and destroys families. 

 *********************************************************************************