This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Wednesday, September 5, 2012.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It's worth remembering that opportunities for local, state, and federal asset forfeiture are everywhere.

Those seizures tend to target those already in a poor position to challenge police authority.

Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the Cato Institute, provides a rundown of some recent galling examples.

The forfeiture, of course, has been going on for a long time and Cato has been following it for a long time.

There seems to be a cluster of reports. Tennessee is a hot spot for

police stop forfeiture where out-of-town motorists, out-of- state motorists will be coming through.

Police will stop them, ask if they can search the car, and confiscate large amounts of

money that happened to be found on the driver.

Now, this seems to happen even when the person had a good

explanation about I had a lot of money because I was going to go out and buy a car

off Craigslist that sort of thing.

And it's been exposed very well by a TV reporter's done there.

Well the latest wrinkle is someone was in the room reporting when a police chief from a town in Tennessee told his

town that they needed to get him a police dog because they were missing out on revenues that the dog could

provide by alerting to money and that sort of thing.

And this just opens a little window.

This group called Americans for Forfeiture Reform which keeps tabs on some of this and they have gone to the websites where police dogs are for sale to departments and there are little testimonials which are kind of like lottery winners saying,

you know, see this adorable pooch, you know, she got $18,000 in one seizure alone.

They're adorable and they make you a department rich.

I mean, what more could you ask for?

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