This is the Kator Daily Podcast for Thursday, September 27th, 2018.

I'm Caleb Brown.

It was just a few years ago the city of Philadelphia turned its prosecutorial resources into an asset forfeiture machine that seized hundreds of homes from innocent owners each year.

Tharponacheth represents innocent property owners and a class action with the

Institute for Justice.

We talked about why the racket in Philly may soon be coming to an end.

Philadelphia does not have a very good reputation when it comes to seizing innocent

owners property and then selling it and funneling that money back into more law enforcement. So what was the case that

set off all of these challenges that the Institute for Justice has made in

Philadelphia? So about four years ago the Institute for Justice filed a federal class action to

challenge Philadelphia system which at the time was the largest municipal forfeiture program.

Philadelphia had really turned civil forfeiture into this kind of machine

that was taking more than 1,200 homes, more than 3,500 vehicles, and more than $50 million

in cash from its residents, many of whom were never even charged with a crime.

And this forfeiture machine was fueled by a very direct but perverse financial incentive.

As you noted, police and prosecutors were allowed to keep and use forfeiture revenue as they saw fit.

And so they really amassed a forfeiture slush fund just in that time period from 2002 to 2014 a forfeiture

slush fund of about 72 million dollars.

Now for people who have been, had their property seized, what kind of process were they

given in order to begin trying to get their property back?

It was really no process at all, certainly not one that could be considered due process.

Over decades, Philadelphia system involved filing these cookie cutter legal documents

...