So you spent a year going from county to county, courthouse to courthouse, just taking pictures of documents?

Pretty much.

Anna Lee has spent much of the last year traveling around South Carolina, meticulously reviewing court records.

The work was kind of mind-numbing because you're trying to go as quickly as possible.

Courthouse by courthouse.

She's been filling in this picture of how policing works in her home state.

She's been putting day-to-day interactions with police, like traffic stops, into a big spreadsheet.

And you're just hunched out of your computer, just type in, typing, typing.

I actually went to a really, really small county, and they didn't have computers.

So I actually had to go and pull every single case.

And so just going and pulling these files, it just took forever and ever.

And you would repeat this day after day after day after day.

Just sounds like the basic information is so hard to get.

It is. It was extremely hard.

In fact, I did not know how hard it was when I first started this story.

Anna's been trying to understand something called civil asset forfeiture,

which is a fancy way of saying that when police suspect you have a crime,

they've got a right to take your stuff, even if you never get arrested.

They have to have some probable cause to search a person in their car and keep, and seize the

cash. They're not supposed to just find a blunt of marijuana and like $5,000 and seize it saying, you know, I've found drugs.

But it is legal because, you know, like I said, they have to have this probable cause.

It feels like they're digging coins out of a couch cushion.

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