AS LONG AS COPS MAKING OUT LIKE BANDITS, WAR WILL GO ON

The War on Drugs goes on, and the clear winners are the law enforcement
agencies good enough, or lucky enough, to arrest drug dealers transporting a
lot of money. It happens right here in Kansas, and the rewards are close to
incredible.

Last January a Colby police officer stopped a vehicle on the eastbound
Interstate 70 on-ramp for an illegal U-turn. The driver and his passenger,
one Robert Henry Golding, were ordered out of the car and they complied, but
Golding pulled a gun, shot himself in the mouth, and died at the scene.

A search of the car uncovered $3.7 million in cash, and last week a district
judge issued an order of forfeiture that divvied up the loot. It said the
Colby Police Department had full title to the money, but other agencies
would share.

The Thomas County Sheriff's Department and the KBI got $370,000 each, the
Kansas Highway Patrol $92,500, a Garden City drug task force $277,500, and
the Thomas County attorney, the KBI legal division and the attorney
general's office $185,000 each.

That's not a bad night's work, particularly for those agencies located
several ZIP codes away from the action that resulted in the windfall.

Golding was a heavy hitter in drug circles. Just hours before he killed
himself, authorities seized almost $6 million in cash from a storage locker
in Fort Collins, Colo., that was linked to him. A week before that, his
girlfriend was stopped in Blaine, Wash., and $190,000 was found in her car.

Later, authorities took $47,000 from a Golding bank account in Allentown,
Pa., and $5,000 more from another one in Des Moines.

Another note on the Colby cash bonanza: The court gave Golding's mother and
sister $100,000 to settle their claim to the money taken from his car. Some
lawyer probably argued he was an honest boy who made the money mowing lawns.

You're probably thinking that something like the Christmas in Colby couldn't
happen again in Kansas in a hundred years, but think again. It happened less
than three months later, just a little more than 100 miles down Interstate
70.

On April 8, an Ellis County Sheriff's deputy was cruising through a Hays
motel parking lot when he noticed a truck that seemed to have a strange
shape. He called for a drug-sniffing dog, and the dog sniffed and
immediately said, "Bingo!" But the dog was wrong. It wasn't drugs it
smelled, but cash.

A search of the pickup revealed more than $1.04 million hidden in a special
compartment, and a couple from Battle Creek, Mich., were arrested. If they
hadn't changed the shape of the truck to make the hidden compartment, and
had simply left he money on the seat, or on the floor, they'd be back in
Battle Creek rather than up the creek.

The money was turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration for
forfeiture proceedings, and Ellis County expects to get back at least 75
percent of it. That again is not a bad night's work. Even after the
outsiders are paid off, the county cops probably will have a $500,000 gift.

The Hays Daily News, in reporting these two incidents, said it's state law
that the money must be used for more law enforcement. But in Colby, they'll
remember the most expensive U-turn in history, and in Hays they're toasting
their cash-sniffing pooch.

They also should be saying they hope the War on Drugs never ends, because
this couldn't happen if drugs were legalized. The only money that would
accumulate would be profits from the regulated sale of drugs, and it would
be used to treat, and maybe cure, addiction.

There wouldn't be any midnight seizures of millions of dollars, or any cash
windfalls for law enforcement agencies. There's no question it's more fun,
and more rewarding, to fight drugs the old-fashioned way.

It doesn't matter that the war is futile, and that the money seized is a
tiny fraction of the total illegal drug take. The price of drugs is down,
meaning they're more plentiful. Federal, state and local spending on the war
is way up, to something like $40 billion per year, and the prison
population, thanks to drug convictions, has grown from less than a million
to 2 million in 15 years.

And there's this: The surgeon general says the annual number of
tobacco-related deaths in the United States is about 400,000, and the
National Safety Council says the last count on annual deaths due to drugs
was 2,075.

That doesn't count drug-related murders or Golding's suicide.

The question is, is the cops-and-robbers drug war the way to go? We'd better
hope it is, because it appears to be here to stay.

Dick Snider's e-mail address is dsnider@cjonline.com.