Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Wants Controversial Law To Fight Gangs

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is unveiling a plan before the city council today to punish crime by suing gangs, a move which will include seizing assets from gang members in order to combat gun violence and other crimes.

Mayor Lightfoot’s gutsy legal maneuver toward broad civil action comes over 24-hours removed from a bloody weekend in Chicago: 60 shot and seven killed.

Chicago news outlets report outrage by citizens who fear the new initiative—already enforced on a federal level—may be used to seize their assets without due process.

They’re right.

The buzzphrase Chicago media is currently eschewing (i.e. failing to say at all), “civil forfeiture,”. The law Lightfoot wants to enforce is a controversial legal tactic with an air of infamy.

Civil forfeiture’s sweeping guidelines allow police the right to take a citizen’s property. From there, they can tie  it up in a web of legal proceedings and fines. All this makes it highly unlikely the owner will fight for their goods.

On paper, the tactic sounds good for tackling a city infested with gun violence. In practice, the power is subject to abuse. Against private citizens, they may never see their day in court—the price for admission is too damn high.

A Cause for Revolution

The practice of the government seizing citizen’s property dates back to the Navigation Acts the British Empire instituted in 1660. With these laws, the empire gave itself the right to seize cargo off of ships for its own use. The aggressive use of civil forfeiture against the colonies helped create division, pushing the colonists towards freedom from the English.

Since then, the U.S. government has turned the tactic against its own citizens. Today, over 30 states currently enable some form of civil forfeiture. And, just as with the British, the law is enforced in exceedingly horrific ways, from taking cars to seizing entire homes, rendering thousands of people jobless and homeless.

Not all states are fans of civil forfeiture, though. Four states—North Carolina, Nebraska, New Mexico, and Maine—abolished the tactic. Since 2014, 36 states have reformed their forfeiture laws. Painful stories of private citizens losing their cherished  property to their own government leaves a bad taste in the mouth.

Chi-town Chaos

If ever there was a case for a let’s-get-it-right-this-time campaign, it’s Chicago. Illinois. Thanks to the city’s violence, it’s perpetually above the national state average in violent crime. At the time of this writing, only data up until the end of 2019 was available on the FBI’s crime index site, but that data paints a grim picture.

This past August, the City of Chicago recorded 493 gunshot victims and 78 murders, up from 64 homicides in August of 2020. Murders in Chicago are 3% higher in 2021 year-to-date compared to 2020. July of 2021, saw 461 shootings.

Now, Mayor Lightfoot has had enough. But is civil forfeiture the right move? It remains in the hands of the police that enforce the laws. Mayor Lightfoot isn’t, herself, cuffing suspects and seizing assets. Again, a complex system of legalese is left in the hands of frontline soldiers, a task that should ultimately be left to a judge and jury.

Then again, if it weren’t for civil forfeiture, we might not be a free nation, whatever “free” means these days.

By Dariel Figueroa

Reach Dariel at: svgknomad@gmail.com