NYPD brass testified before the New York City Council Thursday that it has no idea how much money it seizes from citizens each year using civil asset forfeiture, and an attempt to collect the data would crash its computer systems, The Village Voice reported.

Concerned by the lack of transparency surrounding the NYPD's civil forfeiture program, NYC councilmember Ritchie Torres introduced legislation this year that would require annual reports from the police department about how much money it seizes, but at Thursday's hearing, the NYPD said it has no technologically feasible way to track seized money that was ultimately not pursued through asset forfeiture. From The Village Voice:

"Attempts to perform the types of searches envisioned in the bill will lead to system crashes and significant delays during the intake and release process," said Assistant Deputy Commissioner Robert Messner, while testifying in front of the council's Public Safety Committee. "The only way the department could possibly comply with the bill would be a manual count of over half a million invoices each year." When asked by councilmember Dan Garodnick whether the NYPD had come to the hearing with any sort of accounting for how much money it has seized from New Yorkers this past year, the NYPD higher-ups testifying simply answered "no."

According to the Voice, the NYPD "claimed that it only legally forfeited $11,653 in currency last year — that is, gone to court and actually made a case as to why the NYPD should be taking this money."

As I reported last month, Bronx Defenders, a legal aid group, is suing the NYPD for public records on its asset forfeiture program, which rakes in millions in seized cash and property from arrests every year. According to the scant records Bronx Defenders did manage to get back, the NYPD reported more than $6 million in revenue in 2013 from seized cash, forfeitures, and property sold at auction, and it had a balance of more than $68 million in seized currency in any given month of that year. Bronx Defenders say the records indicate that the vast majority of seized assets are simply forfeited by default after the deadline passes for the property owner fails to go through the burdensome and Byzantine process of trying to retrieve them by the deadline.

The NYPD's "unclaimed cash and property" sales totaled $6.5 million in 2014 and more than $7 million in 2015, according to the Bronx Defender lawsuit.

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