CRITICS TARGET DRUG RAID SEIZURES

Police Often Keep Property Even Absent A Conviction

Before dawn, heavily armed officers stormed Shane Hendrickson's
Tacoma home. They busted open the front door, grabbed the
self-employed painter and hauled him off to the police station.

There, they grilled him, accusing him of participating in a major
pot-growing operation. Hendrickson steadfastly denied it, and hours
later, detectives had enough doubts to cut him loose.

By the time he returned home that day, Oct. 4, Hendrickson's
baby-blue 1984 Chevy van -- with Dialed-in Paint Co. stenciled on the
sides -- was gone. So were his business papers, including bids for
upcoming jobs. And his girlfriend's new computer and all her disks.

In the blink of an eye, Hendrickson, 27, was out of work.

"It just kind of shut me down for a while," he said. "These people
think they're above God."

Hendrickson, though, was more fortunate than most. He hasn't been
charged with a crime, and, after a month or so, the last of his
property was returned -- albeit with a lawyer's help.

In the past decade, drug-related property seizures have skyrocketed
in Washington, with annual proceeds raised from auctions statewide
jumping from $1.2 million to a record $6.7 million in 2000. That
doesn't count forfeitures made by federal agencies, such as the Drug
Enforcement Administration or the FBI.

In King County last year, authorities seized $2.2 million in
drug-related assets. But even though four out of 10 criminal cases
either never got off the ground or fell apart, the bulk of the cars,
cash, cellular phones, stereos and other goods grabbed from those
suspects were never returned, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer has
found.

One out of five people whose property was seized were never charged
with a crime. When people were charged, the cases were dropped about
23 percent of the time, according to records obtained from the state
Treasurer's Office and a search of computerized court documents.

Washington's powerful property-seizure law, loudly criticized by
defense attorneys and civil rights activists, allows police
departments, sheriff's offices and drug task forces to take a
suspect's property if authorities believe it was used in connection
with a drug crime or purchased with tainted money.

Fears of overzealous law enforcement have spurred a drive to revamp
the law -- toughening the legal standard for forfeiture and barring
police from taking a person's property until he or she is convicted
of a crime.

Backers of Initiative 256, which include the American Civil Liberties
Union, must collect 197,734 valid signatures by Jan. 4 in order to
put the measure before the 2002 Legislature. Lawmakers can pass I-256
outright or put it on the ballot next November.

Forfeiture money helps fund drug enforcement efforts, which critics
call a blatant conflict, driving authorities to seize as much as they
can from suspects -- even when there's insufficient evidence to
support criminal charges.

"There's a huge financial incentive for police to be taking
property," said Jerry Sheehan, legislative director of the ACLU of
Washington. "That they can do that without any charges ever being
brought, let alone any conviction gained, is very troubling."

Legislators adopted modest reforms this year, passing a bill that
shifts the burden of proof to police when their seizures are
challenged. Law enforcement agencies are also required to pay legal
fees if they lose such a challenge. The bill passed only after a
tougher measure, similar to the current initiative, failed.

Law enforcement officials say further restrictions would hurt their
ability to crack down on drug dealers by choking off some of the
money supporting undercover operations.

"We don't want to jump off of the cliff" with an initiative that
could effectively end forfeitures in Washington, said Christopher
Hurst, a Black Diamond Police Department detective and Democratic
state representative. "The answer here really falls somewhere in the
middle."

"In reality, money is the engine that drives drug dealers," said
Steve Tucker, a King County sheriff's detective who has worked drug
cases since 1989. "If you take away the money, it's not only
deterrence for new guys, it's stopping repeat offenders. If you
dismantle the structure, including the proceeds, they have to start
again at ground zero."

But why are so many suspected drug dealers finding their property
seized but escaping punishment?

The P-I examined 236 King County cases involving property seizures
last year and found that 50 suspects, or 21 percent, were never
charged. Of the 186 cases that were prosecuted, 42 (23 percent)
dissolved into acquittals or dismissed charges, court records show.
There has been no resolution in 19 other cases.

Thus, at least 39 percent of the 236 cases never resulted in
convictions, a fact law enforcement officials say isn't surprising.

They say many of the smaller fish turn state's evidence or become
informants at the behest of detectives in hopes of busting
higher-ranking traffickers. To shield the suspect from liability, the
property is often purchased in the name of a different party, a
"straw owner," such as a girlfriend. In those cases, the property
owner is not the suspected criminal and doesn't get charged.

Even though the criminal cases often crumble, property seizures
usually stand up. In the vast majority of cases, people who have
property seized never get it back, according to defense attorneys,
prosecutors and police.

That's because police have less to prove in taking property than in
convicting people of a crime, said Seattle attorney Richard Troberman.

"You are operating under a much lower legal standard, and you are
usually not even facing an attorney," he said.

When it comes to challenging property seizures, low-income people
don't have the same right to a public defender that they do in the
criminal system. Troberman said prosecutors have testified that in
about 80 percent of the cases in which people contest the
forfeitures, no attorney is present. That's roughly the same
percentage of cases the police win, one hearing examiner estimates.

The move to change Washington's law comes in the midst of efforts to
reform property-seizure standards nationwide.

After years of failed efforts, Congress last year passed a bill
sponsored by Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., that toughens the standard for
federal forfeitures. And voters in Oregon and Utah passed initiatives
last year to change their own laws.

In July, unsatisfied with the legislation passed in Olympia, a
coalition of activists -- on the left and the right of the political
spectrum -- took matters into their own hands by pushing a citizens
initiative. In addition to preventing police from seizing property
until a conviction is notched, the Innocent Property Owners
Protection Initiative would redirect forfeiture-related proceeds from
police to state education and drug-treatment programs.

In a related effort, the ACLU next year plans to introduce a bill to
mandate that the state's forfeiture law align itself with a provision
in the state constitution that says proceeds derived from forfeitures
should be used to fund the state school system.

"There was a purpose in the Bill of Rights," said Erne Lewis, a
Libertarian Party activist who is spearheading the initiative effort.
"It was to protect individuals and their property. Forfeiture is a
weapon, and this is what they'll tell you. 'We use this to get guilty
pleas,' they say. Well, so does torture."

Under Washington's law, the agency that seizes the goods gets to keep
90 percent of the proceeds, after a public auction.

The rest goes to a state fund that provides assistance to domestic
violence victims, AIDS-infected babies and others. The law states
that forfeited property "shall be retained by the seizing law
enforcement agency exclusively for the expansion and improvement of
controlled substances-related law enforcement activity."

But that's not the way some agencies, which have been slapped by
state auditors for misusing seized property, have seen it.

It took 2 1/2 years after concerns were first raised internally for
the King County Sheriff's Office to stop allowing employees to use
vehicles seized in drug cases. At one point, 21 detectives and
officials -- including the budget and accounting director, the legal
adviser, a volunteer chaplain and the Asian community liaison -- were
driving the cars.

In March 1997, a drug unit sergeant, Dawn Grout, raised the issue in
a letter to Frank Adamson, chief of the Criminal Investigations
Division, apparently to little effect.

The following February, she sent another memo identifying 16
drug-seized vehicles that she said were still "assigned to non-drug
enforcement personnel in direct violation of state law."

The issue was still unresolved in September 1999, when the Auditor's
Office concluded after a brief investigation that "some vehicles are
not being appropriately used" at the sheriff's office. A short time
later, the last of the seized cars were returned to the drug unit.

Sheriff Dave Reichert, who was appointed in March 1997, about four
weeks before Grout sent her first memo, said that "when the problem
rose to my level, I took care of it. I took the cars away."

Not everyone, including long-time budget and accounting chief Jon
McCracken, was happy about losing the cars, Reichert said.

McCracken, who had been driving a 1991 beige Buick Park Avenue sedan,
referred calls seeking his comment to sheriff's spokesman John
Urquhart.

Urquhart said part of McCracken's job is to handle the accounting of
large amounts of money involved in drug seizures and undercover buys.

"We thought it was a legitimate use of a vehicle," Urquhart said,
defending McCracken's prior use of the vehicle. "Where do you draw
the line? If 25 percent of the activity is drug
investigation-related, is that enough?"

When Puyallup police arrested Lance Gloor on a drug charge in
December 1999, they practically stripped his house bare. Hundreds of
items were seized, ranging from two cars and stereo gear to the
22-year-old maintenance worker's collection of music CDs.

"They cleaned me out," he said.

Gloor later pleaded guilty to growing marijuana and hired a lawyer to
try to fight the property seizure. When he went to the police station
to press his case, Gloor said, he saw his big-screen TV in the break
room. His $2,000 stereo speakers, he was told, were in the office of
one of the detectives who made the bust.

Neither the detective, Wayne Spencer, nor Police Chief Rodger Cool
returned calls for comment.

For the most part, Gloor prevailed. Craig Adams, legal adviser for
the Pierce County Sheriff's Department, recommended returning much of
Gloor's property, concluding that police went too far.

"I looked at the case, and I didn't think it was a very good one, in
terms of search-and-seizure and the like," Adams said. "I said (to
police), 'What proof do you have that this is proceeds of drug
money?' I don't think there was a whole lot of evidence, quite
honestly.

"When they take CDs and stuff, I mean, come on. ... How are you going
to prove it was bought with drug money?"

It wasn't the first time Adams has had to tell officials from Pierce
County law enforcement agencies, including the sheriff's department,
to return seized property.

"I have an obligation to act ethically," he said. "If I don't, I'm dirty."

The Gloor case, however, illustrates how easy it is to cart off a
person's belongings and how difficult it can be to get them back.

Two years later, many of Gloor's possessions -- including 150 CDs, a
camera, a camcorder, a silver chain, an electronic safe and about
$2,000 in small bills -- have still not been returned -- or accounted
for.

Police and prosecutors are quick to point out that suspected drug
dealers who have property seized are legally entitled to a hearing to
try to persuade a hearing examiner to give them back their stuff.

Last year, for example, the King County Sheriff's Office alone seized
various items from 155 people, according to state records. Of those
cases, 44 people requested hearings to contest the seizures.

But fewer than half ever actually had their hearings, estimated Keith
Scully, a deputy prosecutor assigned to the sheriff's office. Some
claimants settled their cases before the hearing, he said, and many
more simply didn't show up.

Several factors weigh against the claimants. The hearing examiners
are often current or retired police officers or prosecutors. And
citizens who cannot afford a lawyer to represent them in the civil
proceeding often have to go up alone against a police attorney.

Shane Hendrickson of Tacoma was lucky enough to be able to avoid
going through the hearing process. Tacoma police returned his
property after determining that he merely knew people involved in the
marijuana-cultivation plot.

Today, Hendrickson is eager to forget the whole episode.

"I just really, really, really want to wash my hands of this and keep going."