Thursday is Constitution Day, a federal observance of one of the country’s founding documents.

SIU Debate club hashed it out Tuesday to determine the constitutionality of civil asset forfeiture and indefinite detention.

“Both represent key portions of police brutality that has been growing every day,” said debater Bobby Swetz, a freshman from Chicago studying economics.

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Civil asset forfeiture allows police to seize and keep or sell an individual’s personal belongings — anything from someone’s cash to their car or condominium — if they allege its involved in a crime. Citizens do not need to be convicted or charged for a crime for police to seize their property.

The Carbondale Police Department seized $9,876.89 in 2010 and $4,442.02 in 2011. In 2015 the department has already seized $51,802.53, according to documents obtained by the DAILY EGYPTIAN through a Freedom of Information Act request.

The club debated whether or not the practice is in compliance with the 5th Amendment’s due process clause, which states “No person shall be … deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.”

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Swetz said the practice clearly violates the amendment because property is confiscated without the individual ever going to court.

“The victims never see a minute of court regarding their stolen assets and the police are simply able to sell it off,” he said. “The local cops act as pirates looking for booty from innocent people.”

Arielle Stephenson, a junior from Torrance, Calif., studying business economics, said even though some officers abuse the practice, civil asset forfeiture does more good than harm.

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She said in a time when state and local budgets are shrinking, the seizure of suspected criminal’s property can provide much-needed funding for law enforcement.

Additionally, she said indefinite detention — when an individual is taken into custody by law enforcement and held without being convicted, charged or arrested — is a key to the war on terror.

“If the threat of indefinite detention didn’t exist, the threat of terror would result in a lot of fear for Americans,” Stephenson said. “Because every criminal would know that they are eventually going to get out.”

Todd Graham, the director of debate, said indefinite detention is most commonly used on people from different countries, but if Americans were being snatched by other countries, the government would treat the situation differently.

“Why should we be allowed to take a French citizen or a Moroccan citizen or a Saudi citizen and just steal them and detain them forever?” Graham asked. “What happens if [other countries] were allowed to do that to Americans with no trial? America would be up in arms, we would not take that for a moment.”

Swetz and Stephenson debated on whether or not the National Defense Authorization Act, signed into law by President Barack Obama, allows the United States government to hold Americans indefinitely without charge.

They could not come to a consensus on the matter because of the act’s vague language.

However, the act allows the military to indefinitely detain Americans without trial in the name of counterterrorism, according to Forbes.

“The fact that I support this bill as a whole does not mean I agree with everything in it,” Obama said in a press release about the 2012 act. “I have signed this bill despite having serious reservations with certain provisions that regulate the detention, interrogation and prosecution of suspected terrorists.”

Sam Beard can be reached at [email protected] or on Twitter @SamBeard_DE.