SEIZE THE SEIZURE LAW

Forfeitures: Legislature gave police too much power to take cars in
misdemeanor drug cases.

THE TOWN of Salisbury, like other jurisdictions in Maryland, has discovered
that seizing cars from people who possess small amounts of drugs is a law
enforcement tool that often backfires on the police. Wherever vehicle
seizures have been pursued aggressively under this law, questionable police
behavior seems to follow.

Salisbury Police Chief Coulbourn Dykes was suspended recently over possible
irregularities in his selling of seized vehicles on behalf of the Wicomico
County Narcotics Task Force. Cars worth thousands of dollars were sold for
several hundred dollars. A $15,000 Harley-Davidson motorcycle was sold for
$3,500, even though a potential buyer offered $10,000. Moreover, prices
obtained for at least three dozen cars, including a 1988 Mercedes, were
never recorded.

In Carroll County, a narcotics task task force several years ago engaged in
the questionable practice of seizing cars and then allowing defendants to
buy them back on the spot. None of the officers was alleged to have
pocketed the money, but the potential for abuse was great. The task force
also specifically targeted vehicles with the highest resale potential, such
as the sports utility vehicle driven by a youth who was caught with a pipe
containing trace amounts of marijuana.

In Anne Arundel County, where police are seizing cars at a rate of more
than one a day, drug trafficking and abuse continue unabated.

Confiscating cars in Carroll apparently had no effect on scaring users off
drugs; witness the heroin infiltration there. Moreover, police don't seize
cars as forfeited property when they make stops for drunken driving or
other similar crimes.

Seizing cars should be reserved for those cases when owners used illegal
profits to buy them, or used the vehicles in the drug trade. In their zeal
to win the war on drugs, state legislators in the early 1980s gave police
powers that often get the police themselves into trouble. It is time to
repeal the seizure law for misdemeanor drug cases.