Analysis: The story on Forbes.com posted February 18 and continues national interest in an Oklahoma issue hotly debated and previously covered (here, here and here) by Tulsa Today. Civil forfeiture is how Oklahoma district attorneys can take your cash, guns and vehicles (top three seized) without a criminal conviction. It is literally both highway and home robbery.

Forbes begins: Without ever having to file criminal charges, police are routinely seizing (and keeping) cash, cars and other valuables. Known as “civil forfeiture,” the practice has netted law enforcement billions of dollars in revenue nationwide. Determined to end unjust forfeitures, an unusual coalition of libertarians, constitutional conservatives and civil-rights activists have banded together to press for reform in state legislatures across the country.

And nowhere has that battle raged fiercer than in Oklahoma.

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