Empty Trash Through Terminal

I have some old empty folders in my trashcan that I cannot delete. I have tried going to the terminal and typing:

rm -rf ~/.Trash/*

But it then gives me a "Permission denied". I am a Terminal novice, and barely that. I'm not sure if this is tied to Mavericks and how I now have to put in a admin password when dragging things to the trash. Very annoying, I would love to shut that off.