[splat]

With regards to point 2, at the federal level things do seem to work very differently. Here is a flowchart outlining the steps you would have to take to reclaim your assets from federal forfeiture:

https://reason.com/assets/mc/2015_06/forfeitchart.jpg

Regarding point 3, part of the problem, too, is that the federal government engages in sharing programs with local agencies. So if most of the money from a local-level forfeiture does not go back to the agency, the agency has a strong incentive to bring the feds into it because then they will keep a considerably larger fraction of the proceeds.