have distorted a tool originally targeted at cartels and drug kingpins. An article in the Philadelphia City Paper in 2012 indicated that Philadelphia prosecutors regularly forfeit sums as small as $100 and that people trying to get their property back sometimes had to attend upwards of ten court dates just to reach a hearing before a judge. Other media accounts chronicled the human toll of civil forfeiture. In one, a Philadelphia grandmother faced losing her home because a grandson sold a small amount of drugs out of it. In another, a Lancaster mother had $300 seized from her purse when her son was arrested on narcotics charges.”

The city of Philadelphia has now agreed to a settlement, which includes the following promises, according to a report from Reason:

The citycustomer station apparatus.
The prior art teaches line lifting apparatus, a portion of which is located at the customer station, and which is operative to lift or disconnect the telephone line from the customer station apparatus at the points of interconnection thereof.
In one such apparatus, a pair of like-poled diodes interconnect, respectively, tip and ring conductors of the telephone line with a time delay circuit whose output is connected through a relay coil to ground. The relay contacts, in a de-energized condition of the relay, connect the tip and ring conductors to the customer station apparatus. When a test voltage is applied at the central office from either the tip conductor or the ring conductor to ground, one of the diodes will conduct, thereby actuating the time delay circuit