THE CASE FILE

Although law enforcement agencies refused to provide records that would
show how much money they were diverting from Missouri schools, The Kansas
City Star found 14 such cases in western Missouri.

Some of those cases were described in court documents, sometimes generated
when a defendant tried to regain money police had seized and turned over to
federal agencies. Most of the other cases came from police reports about
people whose names appeared on a Kansas City police list of 120 money
seizures.

A sampling of the cases:

In January 1997, two Minnesota men were driving on Interstate 35 in North
Kansas City when a Missouri Highway Patrol trooper pulled them over for
speeding.

When the men refused to let the trooper search their car, he called for a
drug-sniffing dog, first from North Kansas City, which did not have a dog,
and then from Kansas City police, whose dog was unavailable. The Clay
County Sheriff's Department provided a dog, which indicated the possible
presence of drugs toward the rear of the car.

Finally, at least an hour after the stop, officers opened the trunk and
found $473,790. When both men said the money did not belong to them, a
federal Drug Enforcement Administration agent was called, according to a
Highway Patrol report.

The DEA took the money, later returning more than $274,000 to the Highway
Patrol and more than $94,000 to Clay County. North Kansas City raised
donations to buy a drug dog so it wouldn't be unprepared the next time such
a windfall occurred.

Jason Higgs' pregnant girlfriend left the house after a fight in 1994 and
called Kansas City police. She told them Higgs kept drugs and a gun in the
house.

Police obtained a search warrant for the house, where they saw several
guns, cash, "expensive-looking furniture," electronic equipment and a
cornucopia of other items, including cocaine. Police obtained a second
search warrant to recover all of it.

Then they called the DEA.

"Given the totality of the above circumstances I contacted the DEA to see
if they would be interested in seizing the items inside the house,"
Detective Steve Christensen wrote in a report.

A DEA agent took the $3,925 in cash, a BMW and all the electronic
equipment, according to police records. Later the DEA returned more than
$10,000 to police.

Higgs pleaded guilty to drug charges in federal court.

Kansas City police arrested David Humphrey in 1992 and seized guns, drugs
and $21,576 in cash. The drug charges were dropped, and Humphrey was
convicted on a weapons violation.

Police held onto the money in a hidden account.

Soon after Humphrey was released from prison in 1996, he was charged in the
wounding of two Kansas City police officers and sentenced to 40 years in
prison.

Police asked the DEA to adopt Humphrey's $21,576 from the seizure four
years before, according to federal court records. Humphrey fought the move
in federal court, but a judge approved a settlement that gave $16,182 to
the DEA, which returned $12,763 of it to police. Humphrey kept the rest.

A Lafayette County sheriff's deputy stopped Bruce A. Wilson in 1993 on
suspicion of drunken driving. The deputy spotted white powder in a vial in
Wilson's shoe and arrested him.

The car was towed to the Odessa Police Department, where a police officer
found $13,328. Two months later a cashier's check was sent to the DEA. The
DEA didn't complete the process to keep the money, however, until three
years later, in 1996, according to court records. The records do not tell
how much the DEA returned to police.

Wilson was convicted the same year in federal court of drug trafficking.

In 1996, Kansas City police searched the home of a restaurant owner after a
confidential informant reported that the owner was selling marijuana,
according to court and police records. Police seized a couple of plastic
bags containing marijuana, $23,000 in cash and three cars.

A few months later, police arrested the owner at his restaurant and charged
him with two counts of distributing a controlled substance. During the
arrest at the restaurant, a friend was searched and police found more than
$3,000 on him, according to police records and an attorney in the case.
That money also was seized.

Police sent all the money to the DEA, which returned $21,000.

The state appellate court recently overturned the restaurant owner's
conviction, ruling that the search of his home was illegal.

But the cash and cars have not been returned to him.

Continue to Part 3: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v99/n013/a04.html