Can't justify a criminal charge? Take their stuff, instead. Society's poor and addicted hardest hit by B.C. forfeiture laws

They arrested Jason over an argument he was alleged to have had with a bylaw officer — something Jason denies — and told the couple that they were clearing the area of campers.

Thomas said what he found most infuriating was that just a few weeks earlier police had suggested that he park by the depot instead of on a Downtown Eastside street, where he and Sabrina had initially parked. He had contacted police after trying to register the camper and discovering that the man he purchased the camper from wasn’t listed as its registered owner.Article content

The 2020 seizure highlights a controversial and increasingly common police practice called administrative forfeiture, where law enforcement agencies can take someone’s belongings, often without charging them with a crime, if the belongings are worth less than $75,000 and police believe the goods are the proceeds of a crime — typically theft or drug trafficking.Article content

While civil forfeiture cases involving multi-million dollar homes and hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash get the headlines, the vast majority of forfeiture cases in B.C. — 85 per cent of cases in 2021 — are administrative forfeitures worth less than $75,000. Civil forfeiture cases are always decided by the courts, while the administrative forfeitures only end up before a judge in the rare cases when a seizure is disputed.

Structural challenges within the legal system, including the high cost of civil litigation and the ineligibility of legal aid in civil cases, mean few of these forfeitures are challenged in court. Police in Surrey, Victoria, Burnaby and Prince George made 335 seizures in 2020, more than than any previous year, according to Postmedia’s analysis. Vancouver police used administrative forfeiture more than any other police agency in B.C., followed by the Surrey RCMP detachment and B.C.’s Combined Forces Special Enforcement Unit.

Andrew Leavens told a story about heading home in the Downtown Eastside at about 5:30 p.m. one day when he was stopped by four Vancouver police officers. He’d spent the day working on a construction site, he said, and tools and pieces of scrap copper stuck out the top of his backpack. The officers wanted to know where it came from.Article content

People are already suffering living on the streets and what little they have is taken. And carrying cash is not a reason for suspicion. Cash is normal, tapping for everything is not but we are being nudged that way.

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