What life is like after police ransack your house, then the charges are dropped
&gt; Shattuck says her marriage and birth certificates haven&#x27;t been returned, and since the Task Force does not itemize seized documents in its paperwork, it has no record of taking them in the first place.<p>Maybe this provides a clue for how to curb civil forfeiture in a way that skirts the arguments for it.  Make all government agencies that seize property responsible for very clearly logging and indicating where it was found, the condition it was in (photographically and by description), and to store it appropriately so it will not be damaged or deteriorate beyond what would be considered normal.<p>If there&#x27;s a cost to seizing property, and it&#x27;s not a situation of &quot;grab everything and throw it into a box until later when we can have a fire-sale&quot;, then that might help this type of egregious abuse.<p>That&#x27;s not to say there aren&#x27;t other abuses of it where this wouldn&#x27;t help much (cash seizure, for example), or that we don&#x27;t need comprehensive, well thought out reform in this area, but it might be a simple, uncontroversial measure that could immediately help in some cases.