Back in 2010, I wrote about what can only be described as a shakedown racket perpetrated on drivers passing through Tenaha TX. The town's law enforcement was stopping drivers passing through the area and invoking asset forfeiture laws in a way that totally failed to meet any sensible law enforcement standards. Old shibboleths like "driving while black" and "driving while looking Hispanic" appear to have been at the root of many of the stops that led to people having cash, jewelry and other valuables seized on the spot.
A number of victims of the shakedowns filed a class-action lawsuit against the City of Tenaha. We then had to watch in disbelief as city officials tried to actually fund their defense in in the lawsuit using...the funds seized from the plaintiffs in the class-action lawsuit. Fortunately a state court slapped down that blatant ethical and financial violation.
This case has now been settled in favour of the defendants, and concurrently, Texas State Law has been updated to try to better protect against abuses of asset forfeiture laws (although accountability for abuses is still weak, and ultimately limited by the doctrine of Absolute Immunity that appears to shield most law enforcement officials from accountability for bad or corrupt decisions). The defendants are, needless to say, issuing the usual "we had to do this to get it over with" press releases in order to rationalize away the egregious nature of the original civil rights and policing violations.
I remain politely skeptical about whether this will prevent similar abuses in the future. Asset forfeiture laws are too tempting a target for abuse, since they bring in money for local cities and police forces, in the same way that traffic and parking tickets do. Those sources of revenue are like drugs in the current economic crisis.