In the last 10 years, Yavapai County has seized more than $8.6 million from Arizona residents using civil forfeiture procedures, although the county’s takings from civil forfeitures have declined since the Arizona State Legislature’s introduction of new limitations on the process in 2017 and 2021.

The county is also slated to receive a further $2.1 million in federal funds for the purchase of a helicopter.

Civil Forfeiture

Civil forfeiture is a legal process that allows police to confiscate the property of individuals suspected of involvement in a crime without charging the owners with, or convicting them of, a crime, with the property or the proceeds of its sale then being retained by the agencies involved.

The U.S. Supreme Court found in Boyd v. United States in 1886 that “proceedings instituted for the purpose of declaring the forfeiture of a man’s property by reason of offenses committed by him, though they may be civil in form, are in their nature criminal,” and ruled that such proceedings were subject to the protections of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments.

However, the use of civil forfeiture procedures increased following the federal government’s introduction of its “war on drugs” in the 1970s as an attempted punitive measure to discourage organized crime.

“Arizona’s civil asset forfeiture scheme violates both the constitutions of the state of Arizona and the United States,” attorney Phillip Londen wrote in the Arizona State Law Journal in 2015. “Specifically, the scheme violates due process and contravenes the express delegation of plenary spending power to the legislature … Arizona’s civil forfeiture scheme features a prosecutorial system in which law enforcement officials and prosecutors have a direct pecuniary interest in the outcome of civil forfeiture proceedings.”

Arizona’s civil forfeiture system was reformed to some extent with the passage of House Bill 2477 in 2017, which raised the standard of proof required for forfeitures and limited the degree to which local police agencies could share in funds seized during collaborative operations with federal agencies. It also imposed greater oversight of the use of forfeited funds by agencies.

“Since the law changed, five, six years ago roughly, the expenditures by the county attorney had to go the board of supervisors for approval, and then expenditures by local law enforcement had to go to the county attorney’s office for approval,” Yavapai County Deputy Attorney Thomas Stoxen said on Sept. 26. The county attorney generally presents the board with a cumulative request for an appropriation of seized funds on an annual basis.

The passage of House Bill 2810 in 2021 changed state law to require that an individual be convicted of a crime before property can be seized, with limited exceptions, as well as requiring that the property seized be linked to the crime and that the government must prove a third party knew about the criminal use of their property before it can seize that property. It further eliminated non-judicial forfeitures and banned roadside waivers used to pressure motorists into relinquishing their property.

“They didn’t necessarily invite law enforcement into the discussion this last time,” Stoxen said of the passage of HB2810. “It was largely special interest groups that were running the show. We didn’t really get a seat at the table.”

The groups that campaigned in favor of HB2810 included the Institute for Justice, the Republican Liberty Caucus of Arizona, the Goldwater Institute, the American Friends Service Committee [Quakers], Middle Ground Prison Reform, Americans for Prosperity, the Justice Action Network, the Arizona Citizens’ Defense League, Arizona Attorneys for Criminal Justice and the Arizona Free Enterprise Club. The legislature’s Request to Speak system logged 960 individuals who registered to speak in support of the bill compared to 23 who registered to speak against it.

In spite of opposition from the Maricopa, Pinal and Yavapai county attorneys and police agencies across the state, HB2810 passed the state house by a vote of 57-2 and the senate by 29-1 before it was signed by Gov. Doug Ducey, who described it as protecting constitutionally-guaranteed rights.

Funds Received

During fiscal years 2013-14 through 2022-23, Yavapai County received a total of $8,662,574 through civil forfeiture proceedings. The majority of this sum consisted of cash and monetary assets rather than tangible property; the types of tangible assets seized and auctioned by county agencies were predominantly vehicles and firearms. Only $137,010 of this sum consisted of shared federal funds, while the rest was taken by state and local agencies.

The county’s total annual takings for each of the last 10 fiscal years were:

• FY14: $1,148,335
• FY15: $1,188,675
• FY16: $1,269,464
• FY17: $1,032,646
• FY18: $826,304
• FY19: $439,364
• FY20: $627,972
• FY21: $1,316,240
• FY22: $420,637
• FY23: $202,105

“We’re not actually doing any civil forfeitures at the moment for the last couple of years, since they changed the law,” Stoxen said. “They didn’t leave us much of a viable statutory scheme. We had a road from point A to civil forfeiture under the old scheme, and instead of creating a new road for us, they kind of put in a bunch of potholes and at some points just dropped bombs on the road and washed out bridges. So it’s kind of a bit of a mess right now. So we have stopped doing civil forfeiture until we maybe see if we can get some changes to the law, make it viable again.”

Stoxen described “the criminal conviction requirement” as the main pothole.

Sharing with Other Agencies

The county’s seized funds are shared with other state and local police and government bodies, predominantly the Partners Against Narcotics Trafficking task force, which received $2,372,772 over the 10-year period.

During the 2016 election, which included a ballot measure, Proposition 205, to legalize marijuana, PANT gave $50,000 of these seized funds to the anti-drug lobbying group MATForce, which used them to provide misinformation about the benefits and risks of cannabis use. The county also gave MATForce $5,000 in direct funding in 2016.

Then-Yavapai County Attorney Sheila Polk cofounded MATForce in 2005 and serves as chairwoman of the MATForce Board of Directors. Polk and MATForce Executive Director Merilee Fowler campaigned against medical marijuana and recreational marijuana before a 2015 opinion by Attorney General Mark Brnovich concluded counties and county officials were prohibited from using public resources to influence the outcomes of elections.

A number of Verde Valley municipalities have shared in the county’s largesse:

• Cottonwood: $165,213
• Sedona: $119,240
• Camp Verde: $102,444
• Clarkdale: $55,000
• Yavapai-Apache Nation: $35,000
• Jerome: $30,000

An additional $51,550 in seized funds was spent on Yavapai County Silent Witness.

The county’s total disbursements of seized funds for rewards, interagency sharing and expenses over the 10-year period were $7,476,627.

On May 19, 2021, the Yavapai County Board of Supervisors approved allocating $100,000 in PANT funding and $96,667.82 in jail funding for the purchase of an armored personnel carrier, in combination with $149,315 in grants from the Arizona Department of Homeland Security. The estimated cost of the APC was $345,928.82.

On Aug. 10 of this year, the county received an additional $2,108,000 grant from the Bureau of Justice Assistance, an office of the U.S. Department of Justice that distributes funds to local police agencies, for the purchase of a Bell 407 or similar helicopter.