"Central to the American criminal justice system is that every defendant is innocent until proven guilty. But civil forfeiture isn't a criminal action; it's a civil one, occurring in civil court, where defendants are not necessarily entitled to a lawyer."
Part of the problem is that it happens to people who have stuff to lose (because people with little to lose don't wind up sitting on 10k in cash or similiar). If this happened to people with nothing to lose there's be a big enough body count that we'd have solved it by now.
There is literally no legal way to stop this from happening. Even if it is made illegal everywhere there are effectively zero DAs willing to prosecute police for anything they do on the job.
Ok. But you can make civil asset forfeiture illegal. Now they may so seize your property, but it would be a more straightforward fourth amendment battle
They are literally stealing from the people they are charged with serving in broad daylight with zero actual justification, if it’s made illegal they will simply not give you a receipt. The individuals that use “civil forfeiture” are not like normal people, they are movie mafia goons and they cannot be reformed.