INITIATIVE WOULD LIMIT DRUG FORFEITURES

OLYMPIA -- An initiative filed Thursday would limit the power of
police agencies to seize and sell the assets of people suspected of
drug crimes.

The initiative, which does not have a nurnber yet, would require a
conviction before such property could be sold.

Backers point to cases such as that of Judith Roderick, a Lacey tax
consultant who returned from a cruise four years ago to find police
waiting at the airport.

She was arrested and sheriff's deputies seized her computers, tax
software, client records and two motorcycles. They also cleaned out
four bank accounts, causing outstanding checks to bounce.

Roderick had done $500 worth of routine work on a land trust for a tax
client whom police suspected of drug dealing.

Thurston County sheriff's investigators suspected her of money
laundering.

All charges were dismissed, but Roderick says her business was
devastated and she still hasn't climbed out of a hole of debt, despile
a $200,000 setflement from Thurston County.

The initiative would toughen the legal standards for forfeiture, And
it would send the money into a state education fund and to
drug-treatment programs.

Law enforcement agencies in Washington now keep 90 percent of what
they seize.

The campaign will need more than 200,000 signatures by the end of the
year. The initiative would go first to lawnakers, who could make the
proposal law or send it to voters in November 2002.

In Washington, police agencies have seized a combined total of nearly
$43 million in suspected drug property over the past six years,
according to figures on file with the state treasurer. Similar
initiatives have been approved in Oregon and Utah.

This spring, lawmakers in Olympia balked at a bill tat would have
accomplished what the initiative proposes.