Law enforcement has been taking a beating, and it is getting worse. Police in New York City are being warned that a group of black militants is planning to murder police officers on duty.
There can be little doubt this is one result of a rush to judgment by the media and politicians whenever there is an incident involving the police.
The left is quick to jump into any situation and take sides, as President Obama did in the cases of Cornel West, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown and Eric Garner.
The latter two cases are instructive. There are times when criticism of the judicial system can be justified, and in the Garner case there were facts that made questioning the grand jury's decision reasonable.
However, it also is clear that in both cases race had nothing to do with the incident -- yet it was race that hustlers like Al Sharpton used to foment violence.
But there can be criticism that does not fault the system itself.
Civil forfeiture is a practice that allows injustice in the pursuit of justice.
It has ancient roots in law and it was used during Prohibition, but has only been prevalent during the past 30 years since passage of the Comprehensive Crime Control Act.
The law is intended to hit criminals in the pocketbook. But it can hurt innocent people as well.
Civil forfeiture allows police to seize private property even if the owner is not accused of a crime. If they stop a guy who has $10,000 in cash on him, they can take the money and he has to prove he is innocent of a crime in order to get it back. Another form is equitable sharing, which allows them to seize property from an accused criminal, turn the case over to the federal government and keep 80 percent of the proceeds.
In the South Florida city of Sunrise, the police force apparently went overboard on civil forfeiture.
The Department of Justice inspector general found that the Police Department was keeping sloppy records, violating its own procedures and possibly making deals with a local law firm to get around rules governing how forfeiture money was spent.
There are many examples of people having cars, cash and other property grabbed by the cops. While the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act of 2000 helped, obviously there still is work to do.
The problem is that the law creates bad incentives. People act on incentives.
Like other issues in these complex times, this is one that draws criticism from both the left and right.
Other laws have had good intentions yet produced unwanted outcomes. The Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act was meant to allow the police to attack the mafia, but has been employed in all kinds of noncrime-related disputes even among members of a church congregation.
Give the police all the tools to do the vital job they do, but don't enact laws that give them incentives to unfairly confiscate private property.
Lloyd Brown was in the newspaper business nearly 50 years, beginning as a copy boy and retiring as editorial page editor of the Florida Times-Union in Jacksonville. After retirement he served as a policy analyst for Florida Gov. Jeb Bush.
