I have written multiple posts about the menace in the US of what is known as ‘civil asset forfeiture’. This is where police can seize the assets of people (cash, cars, even houses) even before they are convicted of any crime and make it well nigh impossible for them to get it back even if they are completely innocent. This has become just another way for some local jurisdictions to raise money to fund their operations, particularly their police departments.

John Oliver highlighted this abuse ten years ago.

A couple of days ago, I watched a new film Rebel Ridge on Netflix that deals with precisely this issue. A young black man Terry Richmond rides his bicycle into a small rural Alabama town with $36,000 in cash, with $10,000 meant to bail out his cousin who was arrested on a misdemeanor marijuana possession charge, and the remainder for both to buy a truck and start a small hauling business.

But he is stopped by local police who find the money and confiscate it on the grounds that it might be drug-related even though they had no evidence at all. When he tries to get it back he is threatened by the sheriff. Summer McBride, a paralegal in the county courthouse, tells him that she has unearthed evidence that the police department and the judge have a scheme going where people get arrested for minor infractions, the charges get elevated, their property confiscated, and they are thrown in jail with high cash bail. She says that fighting to get their money and property back will take a long time and often cost more than what was confiscated so most people, who are poor and cannot afford a lawyer, will simply give up and walk away.

But Richmond decides to fight back and the film deals with how he and McBride take on the system.

Sonny Bunch writes in a review that it is high time a film was made highlighting this abuse of the legal system, and he applauds writer-director Jeremy Saulnier for doing so.

I am not one to argue that all art is inherently political, as this almost always ends up with folks getting into very boring digressions about whether or not a film or a book reflects the political views of the critic and alignment with those views almost inevitably becomes some marker of quality. So keep that in mind when I say that Rebel Ridge is the most effective piece of political filmmaking I’ve seen in some time, a rage-inducing indictment of the practice known as civil asset forfeiture—in which police officers seize property and cash without due process by alleging that it was involved in a crime—and the tyranny of small-town cops that will do more to shed light on an evil practice than any ten documentaries combined.
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Saulnier’s film isn’t a slow-burn, precisely; Terry is run off the road in the film’s opening moments, though those who have come here looking for Rambo– or Walking Tall-style shootouts are probably in the wrong place. Terry uses his martial arts and grappling skills to disarm the cops rather than kill them, and while there is pleasure to be had in watching the fluidity of his movements, I don’t blame audiences who hoped for something a little more vicious to sate our communal bloodlust at the injustice we’re watching.

Because your blood will be boiling by the time things really kick off. Rebel Ridge is an avalanche of infuriations, from the inherent unfairness of civil asset forfeiture to the inefficiency of local bureaucracies to the smug sense of nearly feudal entitlement that local cops lord over the people they’re supposed to be serving. Saulnier layers them on top of each other with almost rhythmic precision, moving us up the anxiety ladder until we’re right there with Terry when he disarms his first cop and drags him inside the station for a little sitdown.

Richmond tries to de-escalate things but keeps getting dragged back into confrontations because of the unfairness and intransigence of the system.

I thought the film was a little uneven and there were some confusing plot holes but Aaron Pierre delivers a very good understated performance in the role of Richmond, and the film is well worth seeing.

Here’s the trailer.