Lucy Parsons Labs, in collaboration with local journalist Joel Handley and the Chicago Reader, has published an investigation of the use of civil asset forfeiture by Chicago Police. In the story, which you can read in full on the Chicago Reader’s site, we show how Chicago Police seize millions from citizens not necessarily convicted or even charged with a crime. We also show how they use this money to fund the operations of their narcotics units and buy controversial surveillance equipment.
We’ll be continuing to request expenditures to keep track of how Chicago Police are using asset forfeiture monies, and updating our data which you can see here:
Acknowledgements: The FOIA requests were mostly done through Muckrock.com, and we’d like to thank Michael Morisy for Muckrock’s support of our project. We’d also like to thank the many FOIA requestors that submitted a request on our behalf. Finally, this work would not be possible without the hard work of the volunteers of Lucy Parsons Labs. In particular we want to thank:
