CONSTITUTIONAL RIGHTS ERODING, ONE DEGREE AT A TIME

From fish fries to bowling tournaments, cash-strapped police
departments are finding creative ways to raise revenue. But some push
the constitutional envelope.

Chillicothe police want the village to expand their use of vehicular
impoundment beyond drug offenses to include DUI and driving without a
license. Motorists would have to pay a hefty fee, possibly $250, to
get their cars back. "If everybody else is adding this, why can't
we?" said Chief Steve Maurer. "For a lot of small towns, the money is
not always there."

We acknowledge the temptation to follow the lead of other
departments. Violators have coughed up $14,000 in fees for
Bartonville, $50,000 for Peoria Heights and hundreds of thousands for
the city of Peoria. As Bartonville Chief Brian Fengel said, "It's
money we wouldn't have otherwise gotten, basically for doing the same
job." The fees help to pay salaries, buy equipment and fuel squad cars.

Already we've witnessed mission creep. Peoria is stretching its use
of impoundment to include noise violations. What's next for cities
aching for revenue? Taking your house for spitting on the sidewalk?
There used to be such a thing as the punishment fitting the crime.

The courts may have ruled that impoundment is constitutional, but
last we checked, that venerable document also had something to say
about being innocent until proven guilty. That's the problem with
pre-trial property seizure - it sets up the arresting police officer
as judge and jury. Confiscation equals conviction. It's one thing if
the car itself is evidence in a crime, quite another if the vehicle
is a carrot to dangle. We always thought the Fourth Amendment was
pretty clear: "The right of the people to be secure in their persons,
houses, papers and effects, against unreasonable searches and
seizures, shall not be violated . . ."

This is no defense of lawbreakers, nor is it a condemnation of local
cop shops that governing bodies don't have the stomach to fund
adequately. But with each passing day, Americans seem more and more
like frogs. You know the analogy: Toss a frog in a pot of boiling
water and he'll jump right out; warm it slowly to a boil and the frog
never notices until it's one cooked amphibian.

Same thing with our constitutional rights, being eroded away bit by
bit. We won't even sense it until they're gone.