The Real Stories Behind Netflix Hit Rebel Ridge
The Netflix movie Rebel Ridge is a bona fide hit for the streaming service. It's spent two weeks as the number one movie , gaining more views in its second week after premiering. The movie is a taught thriller that sees a former military hand-to-hand combat expert take on the corrupt police department of a small southern town.
While the fights, shoot-outs, and plot resolution are pure Hollywood, the inciting incident is based pretty firmly in the reality of civil forfeiture. Aaron Pierre plays Terry Richmond, who we meet as he is biking down a country road listening to metal on his headphones. A police car pulls up behind him and silently puts its lights on. A moment later, the squad car rams him, throwing him from the bicycle.
The police search his bag and find tens of thousands of dollars in cash, which Terry wants to use both to bail out his cousin and purchase a truck. The police seize the money, saying it's the profits of drug crimes even though they know absolutely nothing about Terry and despite Terry showing them the listing for the truck he was planning to buy.
At the courthouse later that day, a helpful court employee explains to Terry how civil forfeiture works: "When they bring this case, you won't even be named... It's going to read the Township of Shelby Springs vs. $36,000, because your property has no civil rights." She goes on to note that fighting for the money could: "Take most of a year and cost you twice what you are owed."
Police seizing cash with little evidence of criminality and using civil forfeiture to keep it for themselves is very real. Eh Wah was pulled over for a broken taillight in Muskogee, Oklahoma. In his car, he had $53,000 in cash that had been donated for a Thai orphanage and a Christian college in Burma. Eh Wah was the manager of a band that was touring the U.S. to raise the money. The cash was still in the individual envelopes people had put their donations into.
Eh Wah was interrogated for six hours and released, but without the money. He was later charged with felony possession of drug proceeds even though there was no evidence connecting him to the drug trade. When his story made national headlines , the charges were dropped and the money was returned.
In Wyoming, Phil Parhamovich was pulled over by the highway patrol. When the patrol officer found Phil's life savings, he told Phil that if he signed a form and left the cash, he would be free to go with just a $25 ticket. Phil didn't realize that he was signing over all his money.
After he found lawyers and his story hit the media , Phil also got his money back...about nine months later. In the movie, Terry is also pressured to sign a property waiver to give up his money.
Although several states have banned the use of roadside waivers, the practice continues. The Flatwater Free Press in Nebraska reported last year that a single small county in the state was responsible for one in three civil forfeiture cases in the state. Most of these forfeitures were made possible because of police pressuring motorists to sign property waivers during their traffic stop.
One line in the movie seems like a joke, but it's also based in reality. The court employee helping Terry notes that the town purchased a "$900 margarita machine for Cinco de Mayo." The district attorney for Montgomery County, north of Houston, admitted to using forfeiture funds for a booze-fueled party that included a margarita machine. Other law enforcement agencies have used proceeds to purchase a zamboni or hire a clown for a party.
The part about losing more money on lawyers than is at stake is also very real. According to the Institute for Justice , in 20 out of 21 states where there was data, the average amount of money forfeited was below what it would cost an attorney to fight the forfeiture. In Pennsylvania, the median cash seizure was just $369, and almost 9 in 10 forfeitures were low dollar amounts that make property owners risk losing more money than they had seized.
The potential for innocent people to lose their property to civil forfeiture is high, which is why some states have decided that it isn't worth it. New Mexico takes criminal proceeds through the criminal forfeiture process, where defendants are provided an attorney and where they are innocent until proven guilty.
And while law enforcement claims that forfeiture is helping them fight crime, the statistics in New Mexico don't bear that out . The state's crime rate in the years following the reform roughly tracked that of Colorado and Texas, two neighboring states that did not reform their civil forfeiture laws.
In the film, Terry gets the evidence to reveal the corruption of the Shelby Springs police department and its chief. There's plenty of real-world evidence of how easily civil forfeiture can be abused. Hopefully some of the tens of millions of people who have seen the movie will push their lawmakers—both at the state and federal level—to end civil forfeiture.
