Tuscaloosa DA Seizing Cars from Drivers Who Flee Police at High Speed

The Tuscaloosa County District Attorney's Office has moved this year to take dozens of vehicles from drivers accused of running from police at dangerous speeds.

DA Hays Webb said the shift in local forfeiture practice is aimed at preventing pursuits like the one that made a smoldering wreck of a TPD patrol cruiser that crashed into a parked car and power pole last week.

A Thread review of civil filings in Tuscaloosa County Circuit Court found 37 vehicles among the 100 most recent forfeiture cases brought this year. Most of the rest of the cases involved cash seizures, and five cases predominantly involved firearms.

The number of cars being seized is much higher than a few years ago, when almost every forfeiture in the county involved the West Alabama Narcotics Task Force taking cash from suspected drug dealers. In a Wednesday interview, Webb said the explanation is a 2023 change in state law.

(data from Tuscaloosa County Civil Court / alacourt)

Under the new verbiage of Section 13A-10-52 of the Code of Alabama, fleeing or attempting to elude a law enforcement officer becomes a Class B felony when a driver running from police exceeds the posted speed limit by 20 miles per hour, or when the flight causes serious physical injury or death.

That limits the impact of the law to only the most extreme eluders, and Webb said that when a driver's act of running becomes a Class B felony, their vehicle becomes an 'instrumentality' of the crime and subject to forfeiture.

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Webb framed the policy as a public safety measure rather than a revenue measure, and said his concern is for everyone else on the road, not necessarily the suspect.

"I care less about the eluding driver than I do about law enforcement chasing them," he said, pointing to a Friday afternoon pursuit that ended with a TPD patrol car striking a car at high speed, then hitting an Alabama Power pole on Virginia Drive and catching fire. The officer survived, and the suspect escaped.

"And that's not even accounting for pedestrians," Webb said. "Imagine walking out of your driveway to cross the street and not expecting a vehicle coming at 70 miles an hour."

The most recently filed forfeiture complaint reviewed by the Thread described one such chase in the Lake View area at the end of August, when a driver who refused to stop for a Tuscaloosa County Sheriff's deputy allegedly drove 86 miles per hour on the rural-then-residential Dream Lake Road, where the posted limit is 25 miles per hour.

The state has filed a forfeiture complaint seeking to seize the 2004 Nissan Maxima used to run from the law that day.

Assistant District Attorney John Halcomb, who handles the county's forfeiture docket, said the new law has allowed TPD, TCSO, and other law enforcement agencies to seize cars after dangerous pursuits.

Although some of the seized cars are eventually sold and some of those proceeds return to the district attorney's office, Halcomb said that's not why they're pursuing these asset forfeitures with fresh vigor.

"I've told the judges that in felony eluding cases, we're not interested in keeping cars," Halcomb said. "The sun doesn't rise and set on whether we're going to keep some 2005 Toyota Corolla. But we want this activity to stop, or drastically slow down."

Most of the three dozen 2026 forfeiture cases reviewed by the Thread remain open, meaning no judge has yet ruled on whether the taking was lawful or what will become of the vehicles. Halcomb said many times that the vehicles end up returning to an "innocent owner" because the driver who ran from the police wasn't on the title.

"When these go to trial, a large number of the cases involve people who have a girlfriend's car, a parent's car, or a college student in a car that's in the parents' name," Halcomb said.

When that happens, Halcomb said the DA's office typically concedes the point and returns the car, but asks the judge to hear testimony first, establishing a record of how the borrowed car was used.

"While I can give that innocent owner back the car the first time, if this happens again, that car is not going to be back on the road," he said.

Even when a car goes back to such a third party, he said, the wait itself is the point.

"If we have an innocent owner, they can expect that car to sit there for a few months before they get it back," Halcomb said. "It'll make them think seriously the next time about who they let use it, and knowing what they're going to do with it. I'm not about keeping the cars. I'm about making people think a little harder next time."

The DA's office does keep a share of what the courts condemn. Webb said their arrangement with local agencies gives his office 25% of the proceeds of forfeited property, with the seizing agency keeping the rest. That has traditionally meant keeping a quarter of the seized "fruits" of drug crimes, but may increasingly mean getting 25 percent of the revenue from selling seized cars.

Still, Webb said He said the money is not the reason the cases get filed.

"We don't ever do anything for the sake of doing forfeiture so we can make money," Webb said. "We do what we do because it's our responsibility by law, and if dollars follow, so be it."

Webb also drew a sharp line between Alabama's forfeiture laws and others, where a traveler carrying a large amount of cash might see it taken in a stop and be made to prove the money is legitimate. Under our law, Webb said, the state must go to court and show a judge the connection between the property and the crime.

"I don't like the idea of a citizen having to prove that their property is legitimately theirs," he said.

Webb described two categories under which his office pursues vehicle forfeitures. Before the 2023 law, cars were only taken when the vehicle could be proven to be "fruit" of criminal activity. Now, they are also seeking to seize vehicles used as the instrumentality to flee from officers in a way that triggers the new felony law.

He was also blunt about the limited scope of these forfeitures and said people charged with low-level felonies unrelated to drug trafficking or eluding the police are unlikely to see their vehicles seized for it.

There are constitutional limits either way. Halcomb said forfeitures are subject to the Eighth Amendment's Excessive Fines Clause, which bars forfeitures that are grossly disproportionate to the gravity of the offense. Webb offered a hypothetical of a driver selling a misdemeanor quantity of drugs out of an expensive car.

"There's no way on earth, because of the disparate value between what he's done and the thing sought to be taken, that you can seize that car," Webb said.

Instead, these new seizures are meant to deter drivers from taking off at high-speed when police lights turn on behind them.

For continuing coverage of crime, courts, civil asset forfeiture and more in West Alabama, stay connected to the Tuscaloosa Thread.