Notice the headline from the Washington Post:

Asset seizures fuel police spending

Police agencies have used hundreds of millions of dollars taken from Americans under federal civil forfeiture law in recent years to buy guns, armored cars and electronic surveillance gear. They have also spent money on luxury vehicles, travel and a clown named Sparkles.

The details are contained in thousands of annual reports submitted by local and state agencies to the Justice Department’s Equitable Sharing Program, an initiative that allows local and state police to keep up to 80 percent of the assets they seize. The Washington Post obtained 43,000 of the reports dating from 2008 through a Freedom of Information Act request. …

The Post found that it has been used as a routine source of funding for law enforcement at every level.

Read the article for more disheartening information on the subject of Civil Forfeiture and watch John Oliver from a recent airing of Last Week Tonight (HBO) for both the impressive in-depth journalism and a lot of fun along the way.