Article from Reason by Scott Shackford.

Law enforcement officials have tried every trick to attempt to convince Americans to accept civil asset forfeiture, the controversial process that allows the police to take and keep the money and property of those who are suspected, though not convicted, of criminal activity. In particular, police and prosecutors often insist that they need the seized money and property to help fight the war on drugs.

Polls show that most Americans disapprove of these seizures when they understand what they actually are. Most Americans rightfully think that law enforcement should have to convict somebody of a crime before taking their stuff.

The FBI, faced with such disapproval, and hoping to protect its controversial methods, has now brought out the big guns: adorable puppies. Among other things, the FBI uses civil asset forfeiture to extricate pups when they raid dog-fighting operations. So the agency has put together a video and story purporting to show how important civil asset forfeiture is for the care and safety of such animals.

…

It’s obvious that the intended message here is that civil asset forfeiture is a necessary tool for keeping these dogs alive. But there’s an even better solution. The story notes that that these pups had foster families before they were fully adopted. If the FBI is unable to adequately care for the live creatures it seizes, fostering the dogs would seem to be a perfectly adequate fix while the dogs’ owners are being prosecuted.

Read the entire article at Reason.

Image Credit: IDS.photos from Tiverton, UK [CC BY-SA 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0)]