&gt; You: The city is stealing my car without probable cause in an attempt to extort money from me.<p>&gt; City DA: No they&#x27;re not.<p>&gt; What&#x27;s your recourse here?<p>File a civil lawsuit for the violation of Constitutional rights, to wit, the right against being deprived of life, liberty, or property without due process.<p>Report to the State and federal government for potential public civil and criminal action by those governments against the local government&#x2F;officials involved.<p>Work to organize members of the public for political action against the responsible local government&#x2F;officials.<p>Etc.<p>&gt; Concepts like this one, as well as things like civil asset forfeiture, are so clearly in direct violation of the Constitution<p>Civil asset forfeiture in general is not in direct violation  of the Constitution. There may be a valid argument that some of the ways it is currently employed are in violation of the Constitution, though even that is a weaker case than that some of the ways it is employed are just bad policy.<p>&gt; We still have laws (Constitutional and common), and Peabody, Minnesota doesn&#x27;t have the right to do things like put all the gay residents to death by legislative fiat &amp; judicial compliance; If you found this occurring, you wouldn&#x27;t need to file a lawsuit alleging that a constitutional overreach has been committed and demanding merely that the policy cease to be in effect. Instead, you would get some overriding authority, like the state police or the FBI, to run in with SWAT teams and arrest and prosecute every last person peripherally attached to the Peabody legislature or judiciary or law enforcement. For murder.<p>Or, not. Law enforcement agencies have the power to enforce the laws, but they generally have no obligation to enforce them, and quite often real and significant violations <i>are</i> fought with civil lawsuits by those affected rather than direct intervention and criminal prosecution by enforcement agencies. Even in cases where the <i>general</i> problem is one that enforcement agencies are interested in -- the civil rights movement provides numerous examples, where all kinds of serious violations by local and state officials were addressed, some by higher (particularly federal) law enforcement action, some by private civil lawsuits, some by political mobilizing and action, and many by combinations of those methods.