To be fair, Philly didn’t invent forfeiture laws. Gerage H. W. Bush started us down that road.
Asset forfeiture laws allow us to take the ill-gotten gains of drug kingpins and use them to put more cops on the streets and more prosecutors in court.
In the last 5 years alone, the Justice Department shared over half a billion dollars in forfeited assets with State and local law enforcement.
http://bushlibrary.tamu.edu/research/public_papers.php?id=2764&year=1991&month=3