"I need to report a crime," Terry Richmond, the protagonist of the currently popular Netflix movie Rebel Ridge, tells Jessica Sims, a police officer in a small Louisiana town. That crime was highway robbery: the theft of $36,000 in cash. But the perpetrators were two of Sims' own colleagues, and the cash grab was perfectly legal.
While the details of writer-director Jeremy Saulnier's screenplay are fictional, the broad outlines of Richmond's predicament are sadly familiar. The film vividly illustrates the unjust consequences of civil asset forfeiture, a system of legalized larceny that allows police to seize property that is allegedly tainted by crime.
