PUT SEIZED CASH IN BANK ACCOUNT

Area police departments are not the safest places to store valuables.
Whether because police departments harbor thieves or are poor record
keepers, a surprising amount of cash has gone missing in recent years.

In Ansonia, local and state investigators are into their third year of
trying to figure out what happened to $28,000 in cash and a large amount of
cocaine seized from two drug suspects. The money had been stored in the
department's evidence room before it vanished.

With the evidence gone, the drug charges had to be dropped against the
suspects. Last year, Police Chief James J. McGrath said he believed someone
in the department had taken the money and drugs.

Shortly after the Ansonia cash and cocaine vanished, $28,000 in cash and
bonds went missing from the property room of the New Haven Police
Department. After weeks of searching, the bonds and money turned up in a
desk drawer. It wasn't clear how they got there.

And in East Haven, cash that mysteriously vanished from a locked police
safe has never been found.

The police property room is definitely not as safe as the bank.

After fruitlessly searching for the missing Ansonia cash and contraband,
John M. Bailey, the chief state's attorney, has come to the correct
conclusion that police departments are not banks. He is backing legislation
that would give departments the option of keeping confiscated cash in the
bank, rather than the evidence room. The money could only be released by
court order.

That sounds a lot safer than trusting the wayward police inventory methods
that seem to be prevalent. Or as state Rep. John Martinez, D-New Haven, put
it: "Humans are humans. When stuff like that is there, there's always
temptation