As if low-income Chicagoans don’t have enough to worry about – high crime, bankrupt schools, and an oppressive tax structure – they can add theft by law enforcement to the list.

Within the last five years, cops in and around Chicago seized $150 million through civil asset forfeiture. This is a tool used by law enforcement to seize assets that they suspect were involved in criminal activity. Too often, though, it simply means police departments loot from citizens who haven't been charged with crimes.

In Chicago, also, they’re not targeting kingpins and cartels like the law intends, writes Radley Balko in the Washington Post. When the seizures are overlaid on a map, they are centered in the poorest neighborhoods in the South and West sides of the city.

They must be targeting drug dealers, right? No. Instead it's simply poor people who are low-level offenders, sometimes even for traffic violations. Along with cash and cars, police have seized televisions, nunchucks, Xbox controllers, and peas. Yes, illicit cans of peas sitting on shelves waiting to commit their next crime.

To be fair, those cans of peas could have been going to feed cartel members, but we’ll never know.

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