In Illinois the district attorney will send you a notice saying they have seized your property and you have 14 days to dispute it in writing by filing a specific (confusing) type of form (which they tell you they will neither provide to you or assist you in any way to complete it). If you fail to notice the form, or if you can't figure it out, or file it late, then your stuff is gone. Dead. The form just means they now have to file a suit and serve you, and now the process starts a second, more complicated road where you have to go to court, file an appearance, potentially pay a lawyer, file motions and maybe go to trial.
99% of time once it goes to court the gov will sit down and have an informal negotiation with you to pay you not to go to trial on the case. The gov attorneys I knew all had an 80% figure. They would always start by saying "Look, we'll give you half your money back right now. I'll write you a check, this matter is over, you never need to come to court again." I would tip off everyone I could that the gov would go to 80% without a fight.
I've seen some funny ones. A dope dealer. They'd taken $150K in dope money. It was definitely dope money. But here they are telling him "Look, we'll give you $90K of it back right now, straight into your bank if you drop this. We'll also try to get you a year off your sentence too."
I think at one point his attorney got a court to basically order the cops to return his assets, but the cops flat-out refused. I think that's when the cops came with the offer of about 10% of the value of the seized assets (around $50K). His attorney, a close family friend, advised him to take it.
My ex's brother was absolutely innocent. And the whole process broke him. He had to move him and his family back into his parents' house while the situation unfolded. And that's why he took his family to live in Mexico. It's such a shame, too, because last I heard he was doing really well in Mexico; he opened a bunch of automated car washes. So, it sucks that a hard-working, entrepreneurial dude like him took his talents to another country because the corrupt-ass local cops wanted free shit.
If you have experience of behaviour like this, I understand that leaning.
But no matter what we do this is an unsolvable problem of policing/judicial system. There will always be people who are falsely accused/falsely convicted. Let's say less than 1%, as a hypothetical. Do we accept that due to that we might be reducing crime by a lot? That's a question society has to answer.
I think the best solution here is not focusing on policing/courts, but making sure that everyone in the society is content, so that they don't commit crimes. Happy people with resources a typical human wants probably don't commit many crimes.
I don't think the police have powers here to shake down anyone in this way (imprison maybe, but not shakedown like this).
Land of the free?
ACAB, because non-bastard cops don't last long in the field. Cops that break the "thin blue line" and push back against this type of thing get ostracized.
I can see how people with little or no money could get dragged into it, their lives likely destroyed. No one really cares, which makes it even worse.