The film Rebel Ridge came September 6 and shot to #1 on Netflix. It depicts a former Marine’s attempts to get his money back after it was taken by police through civil forfeiture. That story sounded pretty familiar to us at IJ. We have been working to dismantle civil forfeiture for decades, but unlike the film’s main character, our clients aren’t vigilantes who take the law into their own hands; instead, they fight back in court. So how accurate is Rebel Ridge’s portrayal of civil forfeiture? To find out, we talk with IJ attorney Kirby Thomas West.
The police here are not the typical bad guys, just people trying to keep doing their jobs well, albeit using bad ways.
