The story is hard to believe: A mayor and police chief conducted a “fire inspection” of a building where medical marijuana was being grown and seized the property for a year and a half without charging anyone with a crime. They then tried to get the property owners to buy two new vehicles for the police department in exchange for returning the property.
But that’s apparently what happened in Highland Park, as documented by Ross Jones of WXYZ and C.J. Ciaramella of Reason. The city mayor claims he thought the owners had been charged with a crime, but Wayne County says nothing has been acted upon. Highland Park returned the property after the news broke the story.
A summary of the situation from Reason:
A Michigan couple says their town seized a building they owned and then demanded that they buy two cars for the police department to get their own property back.
The case, first reported by WXYZ Detroit, began in December of 2020 when the mayor of Highland Park and the police chief dropped by a 13,000-square-foot building owned by Justyna and Matt Kozbial for an impromptu fire code inspection.
The city officials found a marijuana grow operation inside. The Kozbials, immigrants from Poland, say they had a state license to grow medical marijuana, but the city seized the building anyway and held on to it for 17 months without charging them with a crime.
Under civil asset forfeiture laws, police can legally seize property—cash, cars, and even houses—suspected of being connected to criminal activity like drug trafficking, whether or not the owner has been charged with a crime. But not only were the Kozbials never charged with a crime, police never alleged there was any major criminal activity.
In a response to an interrogatory filed in the Kozbials’ subsequent lawsuit against Highland Park, a city police officer answered “none” when asked to identify any predicate felony offenses justifying the seizure.
To read the rest of this guest column, click on Mackinac Center