Writer: Andrew Wilkins
Published April 9, 2023
Chattanooga Times Free Press
More than 100 people turned up at an auction last week to bid on vehicles and tools seized by the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit Drug Task Force and Walker County Sheriff's Office — but civil rights advocates say some law enforcement property seizures are unconstitutional.
About two dozen vehicles were available, according to Rick Potts, owner of Potts Auction Co., the Walker County-based company that hosted the auction at the Walker County Civic Center.
Speaking before the auction began, Potts said it's a long legal process to clear a seized vehicle for sale, so the company conducts auctions whenever it has enough vehicles to make it worthwhile. The last auction was about 18 months ago, he said.
People attend the auction thinking they're going to get a bargain, but because so many people show up, Potts said competition often drives up prices. Potts Auction charges 10% of sale as a service fee, he said.
"People get in there and start knocking heads and go past what they thought they were gonna pay," Potts said.
Standing in the bed of a red Potts Auction pickup truck with a microphone, auctioneer Mike Lofton kept track of the bids and entertained the crowd. A Harley Davidson motorcycle sold for $3,800; a 1999 Ford Ranger sold for $1,700; a 2013 BMW for $3,250. Most of the other vehicles were older models and sold in that price range.
There were several bidders in the crowd of more than 100, but many seemed content to watch the fast-paced auction action.
"They should pay extra for entertainment," Lofton said between bids Tuesday.
Funds raised at the auction go to the drug task force's training and equipment expenses, Caine Railey, commander of the task force, said in an email.
The task force was created in 1990 to combat mid- to upper-level drug trafficking organizations, according to the task force's website. The task force covers the judicial district's Georgia counties of Catoosa, Chattooga, Dade and Walker — and has been responsible for several large, high-profile busts of fentanyl and methamphetamine distributors over the years.
If a law enforcement agency seizes items from an individual, Railey said, forfeiture paperwork will be sent to the district attorney. Then the district attorney sends the individual paperwork to file a response on the seized items.
"If there isn't a response in 30 days after being served, the items are awarded to the law enforcement agency," Railey said. "If a response is given, the matter will be heard in front of a Superior Court judge."
Stephanie Barber, a resident of Ringgold, did a little dance of joy when she bought a 2002 BMW 330Ci for a $1,000 bid. She said it was the first auction she'd attended and didn't have a problem with the fact that the car was seized — as long as it came with a title and was running well.
Joey Engelbrecht said it was his first time at an auction, too. He was inspecting a Polaris 2016 Razor 1000 all-terrain vehicle. He said he recently bought some property in Catoosa County and wanted a vehicle to explore the terrain.
Engelbrecht said he was aware of the issue of civic forfeiture but didn't share an opinion about it.
Dan Alban is a senior attorney and co-director of the Institute for Justice's National Initiative to End Forfeiture Abuse. The Arlington, Virginia-based nonprofit organization has studied Georgia's civil forfeiture process.
Alban said his organization's stance is that criminals shouldn't be able to keep their ill-gotten gains, but only if they're convicted of a crime first. But that's not what's happening in the vast majority of forfeitures in the United States, he said in a phone call.
At the federal level, and in most states, including Georgia, law enforcement agencies don't need a conviction — or even charges — to seize property. Agencies only need suspicion that the seized property has been used in drug trafficking.
Because the seizures take place at the civil level, Alban said defendants don't have regular constitutional process rights, like the right to an attorney, and the standard of evidence is lower: only the "preponderance of the evidence" rather than "beyond a reasonable doubt" like criminal courts.
"The vast majority of those cars that you saw, or the vast majority of the money that gets seized is not the result of a criminal prosecution, it is just a civil forfeiture, where the police have probable cause — they suspect someone is engaged in criminal activity," Alban said. "They seize the property based on that and then, unfortunately, in the vast majority of cases, they never go to court."
Typically, the property seized isn't valuable, like a used car, he said. Based on data from 2015 to 2018, the median amount of cash seized was $540 in Georgia.
"If you have a low amount of money seized or a used vehicle, it's often not worth it to hire an attorney," Alban said, to try and get the property back.
Studies show the issue affects low-income and minority Americans the most, he said. For a working person, Alban said losing their car or the cash they were about to use for rent can quickly spiral into unemployment and homelessness.
Alban studied Georgia as a whole but didn't have specific information on insight on the Lookout Mountain Judicial Circuit Drug Task Force's asset forfeitures. Civil forfeitures by multijurisdictional units are harder to track, Alban said, since they split funds among its participants.
Railey was asked about the Lookout Mountain's task force forfeitures but didn't respond before deadline.
Sheriff's offices and city police departments have their own property seizures, too, Alban said.
The most recent asset forfeiture report from Walker County listed on the University of Georgia's Carl Vinson Institute of Government's website is from 2018. Only two cash and no property seizures were reported: one for $550 and the other for nearly $740. Catoosa County's most recent asset forfeiture report is from 2021, and listed two seizures totalling nearly $6,000. The report also listed one vehicle returned: a 1996 Chevrolet Geo Tracker.
On the organization's website, the Institute for Justice recommends Georgia end civil forfeiture and direct all forfeiture proceeds to a non-law enforcement fund, so law enforcement doesn't have incentive to do more seizures.
A raft of three bills aimed to reform civil forfeiture was introduced to Georgia Assembly during the 2023 session, but the bills did not get voted out of committee.
