LAWMAKERS AGAIN HOPE TO TIGHTEN UP LAW ON FORFEITURES

Some Missouri lawmakers are about to take another crack at making police
send money they seize in drug crimes to schools.

So far, they've had little success.

In 1990 the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed a constitutional mandate
requiring police to give up the money. The case involved the Odessa School
District and more than $1 million seized by the Lafayette County sheriff's
office.

Just one week later, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri
wrote a letter offering to help local law enforcement officials keep drug
money. Jean Paul Bradshaw II encouraged them to file their forfeitures with
the U.S. Department of Justice, rather than with the state.

In 1993 the state legislature passed new laws to block such handoffs, but
they continue.

The legislature's next attempt will come in the new session with a bill
that would allow law enforcement to keep 50 percent of the drug money if
the other half is given to schools.

Under one proposal, police departments would not be able to keep their 50
percent. Instead, the money would be deposited in a state fund and
distributed as grants to all police agencies.

Missouri voters also would have to approve the measure, because it would
amend the state constitution.

Even though the bill has been around several years, passage may be more
likely this year.

Educators have been leery in the past, said Missouri Rep. Craig Hosmer, a
Springfield Democrat who sponsored the bill to split the money. But
educators finally appear to be accepting the compromise because they
realize how little the schools receive in forfeiture money, Hosmer said.

"Fifty percent is better than nothing," Hosmer said.

However, if law enforcement can get 80 percent of the money by sending it
through a federal agency, would they settle for 50 percent instead?

No, said Capt. Tom Neer of the St. Charles County Sheriff's Department. "We
work with the DEA and FBI," Neer said. "So any of those forfeitures or
seizures that they get, we share in 80 percent."

Some legislators support the 50-50 bill because they think police should
have some share of drug money. In fact, many of them say they didn't know
police already had been keeping money that should have gone to education.

Two backers of the 1993 laws, Sen. Wayne Goode, a St. Louis Democrat, and
Sen. Francis Flotron, a Chesterfield Republican, said they would consider
other reform bills this session.

The two senators said it might be necessary to prohibit any drug money from
being transferred to federal agencies under any circumstances.

Another law that was passed last year will help clear up the mystery of how
much -- or how little -- money police actually send to the schools.

Until the law went into effect in August, there was no central
clearinghouse to tally the money. Instead, the financial records were kept
by each of Missouri's 114 counties and the city of St. Louis.

The law, which was sponsored by Rep. Jim Kreider, a Nixa Democrat, requires
the Missouri Department of Revenue to collect the money and place it in a
school building fund. Although that will provide a central tally of money
collected for schools, the public still won't know how much money law
enforcement diverts away from education.

The constitutionality of the law was challenged in a lawsuit filed last
month by Lafayette County Prosecutor Page Bellamy.

Bellamy is one of the few Missouri prosecutors who has publicly pushed his
county to file forfeitures with the state -- and that's one reason for his
challenge.

Under the new law, counties like Lafayette that turn over drug money for
education would be treated the same as counties that don't.

In another pending lawsuit, Kansas City police asked the courts in 1997 to
clarify what the department must do with seized and unclaimed money of all
types that it had been keeping and not sending to either the state or
federal agencies.

The existence of the fund, worth more than $1 million, was disclosed in
1996 by The Kansas City Star. Defendants in the lawsuit are 11 school
districts that normally would receive most of the money.