Proponents maintain that civil asset forfeiture is an important crime-fighting tool, often saying it lets them attack the profits of drug traffickers even when there's not a clear criminal link. But it gives authorities the power to take property without charging its owner with a crime, much less securing a conviction. In Oklahoma, the state isn't even required to provide definitive proof of the alleged criminal ties before taking control of the property, selling it and giving the money back to the departments involved in the case.

Loveless sees this as a fundamental violation of people's rights to due process and property and says the lax standards have gotten innocent people in Oklahoma caught in the civil asset forfeiture net. On Thursday, he sparred with Tulsa County District Attorney Steve Kunzweiler and Eric Dalgleish, a major at the Tulsa Police Department, over the merits of his bill to require a criminal conviction to permanently take someone's property.

Under the proposed law, police could still seize property but would need to secure a criminal conviction to permanently keep it. The measure is currently stalled in the state legislature, but Loveless hopes to push it forward in the next legislative session.

Kunzweiler, the district attorney, said the extra level of protection was unnecessary and that raising the bar for forfeiture would effectively roll out a welcome mat to ruthless drug traffickers from Mexico.

"What we're talking about is inviting some of the most violent people on the history of this planet," he said on the Pat Campbell Show on KFAQ. "You see what goes on in Mexico, you see people's bodies decapitated and hung from bridges. And if you want to bring that drug cartel ideology to Oklahoma, do exactly what Senator Loveless' bill is suggesting," he said.

"We have meth coming through here; it's all coming from Mexico," Kunzweiler continued, going on to say that Loveless was trying to remove "our incentive to take away their profit."

Dalgleish later said that cartels were keeping a close eye on Loveless' legislation and even lobbying for its passage.

The Justice Department and Treasury Department deposited more than $5 billion jointly into their forfeiture funds in 2014, up from less than $1 billion in 2004. Each year, feds give hundreds of millions of dollars back to the state and local agencies that are often responsible for making the initial seizures. But even after their obligations, the total value of assets remaining in these funds surged to $4.5 billion in 2014 -- more than seven times what it was a decade ago.