To Protect and Collect

Taking Cash Into Custody

A Special Report On Police And Drug Money Seizures

RAMPANT CONFISCATIONS REMAIN DESPITE SOME STATES' QUIRKY LAWS

Here's a quick spin through some of the stranger state laws and the ways
police have found to get around them.

Arkansas puts a cap on seizures.

Police can keep up to $250,000 of a seizure. Anything more than that must
go into a statewide fund that benefits all local and state law enforcement.

But police have ignored the cap -- as state officials learned after a $3.16
million seizure by the Arkansas Highway Police in March 1998. A county
prosecutor went looking for the money, discovered the Highway Police had
passed it to the Drug Enforcement Administration and won a court ruling to
get it back.

After losing before the state Supreme Court, Highway Police appealed to the
U.S. Supreme Court, which declined to hear the case.

Highway Police lost their hold on the money.

Meanwhile, legislators discovered that the fund set up for all forfeitures
over $250,000 was empty.

In Georgia, local police can keep almost all the money they seize -- and
state police can't keep any.

But state police make sure they get at least a share.

First, state police have a policy of turning over any cash seizures of more
than $1,000 to the federal government, which will send most of that back to
them.

And when state and local police team up on a drug case, local police take
all the proceeds and spend half to buy law enforcement equipment that they
then give to the State Patrol.

Ohio laws are among the most restrictive in the nation.

A felony charge generally must be filed before property can be forfeited in
state court. And if no charges are filed and there is no convincing
evidence of a crime, property must be returned to the owner.

That's not an obstacle for police.

Cincinnati police specialist Dave Kelly said his department routinely asks
a federal agency to take the property when the prosecutor declines to file
a forfeiture proceeding.

"That's how we do it in Cincinnati," Kelly said.

Several defense attorneys and others say, however, that Ohio statutes are
difficult to understand.

"They are very poorly written statutes, and they are confusing to most
attorneys," said James Schaefer, the assistant prosecuting attorney who has
handled forfeiture cases in Cincinnati and Hamilton County.

Part 1e, http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v00/n682/a01.html