IN DEPTH: WHERE THE MONEY GOES: FORFEITURE PROCEEDS BUY SMALL LUXURIES,
BUT NO SLUSH

Fund allows police to buy equipment without seeking approval from
elected officials

When local gambler Bill Walters called the Las Vegas police's forfeiture
account a "slush fund" during testimony to the Legislature last month,
he aroused the ire of both district attorneys and street cops.

According to Webster's New World dictionary, the term "slush fund"
originally referred to a fund "established aboard ship from the sale of
refuse, fat, etc., and used to buy small luxuries."

Seen in this light, it appears that Walters' characterization might be
at least partly accurate.

State law prohibits the Metropolitan Police Department from combining
its forfeiture account with its general fund, so forfeiture proceeds
offer police a way to buy equipment, without seeking approval from
elected officials, that noncops might consider "luxuries."

The accounting has also been unorthodox in the past and is currently
being revised; the Police Department reports receiving $1.7 million in
fiscal year 2000 while Clark County calculates the figure at $2.1
million.

That said, the department would have to appoint an administrator with
monumental brass or a wooden brain before the forfeiture account could
be tapped for the corrupt purposes suggested by Walters. All flows in or
out of the account must be recorded with the county and create a public
paper trail.

Further, the vast majority of expenditures make better cures for
insomnia than grist for a scandal mill. For example, since many of the
precursor chemicals used to manufacture methamphetamine are extremely
volatile and the closest Environmental Protection Agency disposal expert
is in Los Angeles, police say they have no option but to use a private
firm to destroy the contents of seized meth labs.

That cost the fund $381,002 in fiscal year 2000. The department also
spent $159,692 on automobiles (all of them plain-vanilla cop cars and
pickups), $371,676 on furniture and other equipment, ranging from chairs
to workstations. It also reimbursed the Clark County district attorney's
office $424,719 for the salaries of two attorneys and staff involved in
forfeiture work.

About the only expense likely to raise eyebrows was the $18,800 spent on
the development of the Undercover Case Management System. When
operational, the computerized system is expected to help the Police
Department's intelligence, gang and narcotics units coordinate their
efforts to bring suspected miscreants to justice.

The prime contractor on the project appears to be the Haymarket,
Va.-based FingerPrint USA, a company that specializes in the creation of
automated fingerprint identification systems, live-scan booking stations
and supporting databases.

According to the firm's Web site, its representative clients include the
West Virginia Department of Public Safety, the Immigration and
Naturalization Service and the Argentinian Ministry of Justice.

Another odd expense was the $4,750 the police paid the Coral Springs,
Fla.-based Audio Intelligence Devices for a "Scout Eagle w/50 MW Laser."
A spokeswoman from the company refused to disclose what the item was and
federal law enforcement sources were unfamiliar with it, with educated
guesses ranging from a thermal imaging device to a sniper scope.

A spokesman from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms in
Washington confirmed that the item was not a firearm, and a Metropolitan
Police spokeswoman said the item was a "multipurpose scope."

Finally, the police paid attorney Ulrich Smith $6,990 for his work as a
special prosecutor in the Bill Walters case and a related matter.

"When I first left the DA's office in 1995, I got appointed to a couple
of cases as a special prosecutor when the district attorney had a
conflict," Smith said. "Stew Bell's son had worked for Billy Walters at
one of his golf courses prior to the seizure and so Stew had to recuse
himself and the whole office."

Deputy Chief Ray Flynn said the department seized 5,527 guns in the
fiscal year. State law permits a police department to sell most of these
guns, but the department eventually will destroy nearly all of them
instead.

"It is my direct order that we don't resell them," said Sheriff Jerry
Keller. "We don't even sell Metro guns that we don't need to the open
market. Resales became a big national issue 2 1/2 or three years ago
when another police agency, which had converted to semiautos, had sold
some of its old revolvers and one of them was used in a crime."

Police departments are allowed to keep any of the guns they can use, but
the Metropolitan Police Department keeps relatively few. In fiscal year
1999-2000, said Flynn, only 47 were retained as department property for
issue to officers. This is partly because the department permits its
officers to carry only firearms of specified calibers and high-quality
models, and few confiscated firearms meet those standards. But it's also
because more and more officers choose to purchase firearms instead of
carrying department-issued weapons, so the department no longer needs to
have many handguns.

First choice of weapons goes to the police crime lab, which accepted 125
in fiscal year 1999-2000, said Flynn. Richard Good, laboratory manager,
said their primary function is to provide parts to reassemble a gun
suspected of use in a crime.

A criminal will frequently take a gun apart before he throws it away,
Good explained. "We might not find anything but the barrel. ... But if
we have that particular model, we can assemble a gun using that barrel,
and fire a test bullet through it which may enable us to link that gun
to a crime."

Obtained entirely by forfeitures, most of the crime lab's guns appear to
be in conditions collectors would describe as "well-used to ugly." The
oldest Good could recall taking into the collection was a Merwin &
Hulbert revolver made in the 1860s. Merwin & Hulberts mostly live in
museums now, yet another one turned up just recently when the crime lab
had to eliminate it as a weapon possibly used in a crime.

The Police Department has also set aside a few weapons for its planned
museum, or for training at its range. It is also allowed to release some
to Nevada National Guard units.

The rest are stripped of magazines for use at the department range and
destroyed. Flynn said 3,044 met that fate in the fiscal year, most of
them seized months to years before. The destruction is accomplished in
more than one way, but Keller described the most colorful: "When they
detonate unused bombs out at Nellis," he said, "there are usually a
bunch of guns which we've taken off the street packed between two of the
bombs. That turns them into pancakes of scrap metal."

The department seized 150 computers in the fiscal year, Flynn said, and
released 35 back to rightful owners or to be auctioned off. Only one was
retained by the department.

Willis said the Police Department seized 60 vehicles, including
snowmobiles and personal watercraft in the fiscal year, but only
forfeited 27. They retained only five vehicles for department use,
auctioning the rest.

"Many times vehicles aren't worth seizing," explained Deputy Chief Bill
Young. Some of the vehicles encountered aren't the property of the
person using them in a crime, and therefore are returned to the rightful
owner. Sometimes a perpetrator owes so much money on the car, which
would have to be paid to the lienholder before the vehicle could be
forfeited, that it wouldn't make financial sense to take it.

"We try to have a variety of cars of all types among the fleet so we can
blend into the general population of vehicles. So if there's a real nice
vehicle seized, and the owner is one of those arrested, we'll try to
seize it mostly for undercover work."

But seizing and enjoying luxury cars happens a lot less in real life
than on TV shows, added Young.

"When they're actually capering, they're aware that the circumstances
might allow you to seize that vehicle they're driving. So nowadays, it's
rare to find a luxury car that isn't leased. They're smarter than that."