Pubdate: Sat, 23 Aug 2003
Source: Salt Lake Tribune (UT)
Copyright: 2003 The Salt Lake Tribune
Contact:  http://www.sltrib.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/383
Author: Robyn Blumner

FEDS HELP LOCAL POLICE AGENCIES TIGHTEN THEIR GRIP ON ASSET SEIZURES

Civil asset forfeiture is the most infamous game in law enforcement. While 
in its pure form, seizing the luxury cars, boats, homes and cash of drug 
dealers can be a useful tool in taking profit out of crime, in the real 
world far too many police and sheriff's offices use it to finance and 
enrich their operations, leading to startling abuses.

Go through newspaper archives across the country and you'll find 
investigative pieces going back more than a decade documenting problems 
with police departments' taking people's stuff for their own use, often 
without even bothering to charge the owner with a crime.

No one is immune. Pro basketball player Corie Blount was a victim in 1998, 
when he was pulled over in Ohio on Christmas Eve for having tinted windows 
and no front license plate. His car was searched after a drug-sniffing dog 
indicated probable cause.

No drugs were found, but the Ohio State Highway Patrol discovered $19,000. 
Though there was no evidence of criminality, the money was taken and turned 
over to the Drug Enforcement Administration for seizure. It took months of 
negotiations with the federal government to finally get the money returned.

In the aftermath of this and other such scandals, state legislatures and 
even Congress have made some attempts at reform, but law enforcement has 
vehemently resisted the only real reform: taking the profit motive out of 
seizures by not letting police keep the dough.

Slapping their fingers from the cookie jar is the only way to protect 
against abuse.

In Utah, a popular voter-passed initiative in 2000 sent all proceeds from 
asset seizures to an education fund. Since then, local police agencies and 
prosecutors have done everything possible to stymie the measure, from going 
to court to challenge the initiative's constitutionality (they lost), to 
simply ignoring it and keeping the hundreds of thousands of dollars. 
Finally, in June, a court ordered the money into the school fund.

Responding to the ruling, Salt Lake County District Attorney David Yocom 
echoed the sentiments of other officials by predicting the end of local 
forfeitures. "Doing forfeitures is way down the line in my priorities," 
Yocom told The Associated Press.

If police and prosecutors don't get to keep the money, if it goes instead 
to public education or something equally worthy, they are not going to 
bother with seizures?

Funny, I thought forfeitures were done for a law enforcement purpose, as a 
way to prevent criminals from living large on their lucre, as a 
disincentive to crime. Now, it turns out, it is all about who gets the 
money. Well, fancy that.

And this is where the federal government steps in. Numerous states have 
enacted laws diverting some or all of asset-seizure profits into a state 
general fund or other specialized fund. This is what legislatures do -- 
they develop funding priorities for state revenues. But for nearly 20 
years, the federal government has colluded with local law enforcement to 
skirt state law and put the money back into the pockets of the seizing agency.

Under the process known as adoption, the Justice Department actively 
encourages local policing agencies to turn over their seized assets. The 
department will then do the forfeiture and return 80 percent of seizure 
proceeds to the local agency. So, for a mere 20 percent off the top, any 
pesky state laws can be circumvented. (Utah's initiative was actually 
written to eliminate adoptions, but policing agencies are still sending 
seizures to the federal government, rather than the state education fund.)

Thanks to a wonderful series by reporter Karen Dillon at the Kansas City 
Star (www.kcstar.com/projects/drugforfeit), we know something of the extent 
of the avarice. For example, she writes that in Wisconsin, where forfeited 
money goes into an education fund, only $16,906 was sent to the fund in the 
year ending June 1999. In six months of the same year, $1.5 million in 
seizures was sent by local law enforcement to the federal government.

Michael O'Hear, professor of law at Marquette University Law School and an 
expert on forfeiture issues, says this equitable sharing or adoption 
process is how the federal government gooses local law enforcement to crack 
down on drug trafficking.

"When equitable sharing got set up in the mid-1980s," O'Hear says, "there 
was this huge burst of activity by local police doing drug enforcement. 
Whether it's unsavory or not, it does seem to be true that local police 
departments have been very influenced by the existence of financial 
incentives to do drug enforcement."

In fiscal year 2002, the Justice Department returned $188 million to state 
and local police agencies. All this money drives local law enforcement to 
find any way to get a piece, even if it means bypassing state due-process 
rules. Some states require a conviction before assets can be forfeited, and 
other states don't allow police to seize a primary residence, but none of 
those rules exist under federal forfeiture, so local law enforcement simply 
sends the seizure cases there.

This unscrupulous pact has been going on for years, but few politicians, 
state or federal, have been willing to challenge it. Police and prosecutors 
have a grip so tight on this money that no one and nothing -- not even the 
law -- can seem to pry it loose.
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MAP posted-by: Larry Stevens