On a 24-mile stretch of Interstate 80, traffic stops send millions of dollars to a single, small Nebraska county and its Sheriff’s Office.
From 2018 to 2022, Seward County raked in $7.5 million in cash seized from I-80 motorists. Some of those seizures stemmed from criminal cases, where a person has drugs or guns in the car and is eventually convicted. But more stemmed from civil forfeiture, a practice that allows law enforcement to seize cash without anyone being charged or proven guilty.
The Seward County Sheriff’s Office has specialized in and perfected the practice. In state court, a third of all civil asset forfeiture cases happened in Seward County from 2013 to 2023, a Flatwater Free Press analysis found.
Some motorists allege that their money went missing during these stops. And state lawmakers, who once believed they had banned the practice, have again tried unsuccessfully to end it.
Why does it matter?
Many in law enforcement say civil forfeiture is an important tool to take money, drugs and weapons out of the hands of criminals. Interstate traffic stops have led to the rescue of human trafficking victims, and Seward deputies have pulled over murder suspects.
To defense attorneys and civil liberties advocates, it’s a money grab. It allows police and prosecutors to prey on individuals who may or may not have done anything wrong, they say.
The money helps save taxpayer dollars, Seward County Sheriff Mike Vance has told county board members. It has paid for equipment and patrol cars, an $806,000 building that now houses the Sheriff’s Office and drug-sniffing police dogs.
Now, that spending has been called into question, and frozen by the federal government, after a compliance review by the U.S. Department of Treasury found that the Sheriff’s Office had spent $762,000 on “impermissible” spending on salaries over three years.
