UTAH ASSET FORFEITURE REFORM LAW UNDER ATTACK

In 2002, Utah voters approved Initiative B, which drastically
tightened the state's asset forfeiture laws. The initiative won with
an impressive 70% of the vote, making crystal clear the will of the
state's electorate. But the state's law enforcement apparatus,
including state Attorney General Mike Shurtleff, whose job it is to
enforce the law, has never accepted the Utah Uniform Property
Protection Act. Now, it is in real danger of being undone. A measure
that would substantially gut the law in the name of "reform" passed
the Utah Senate Thursday and is headed for the House.

Prior to the voter-approved reform in 2002, law enforcement agencies
in the state were entitled to keep all the booty they seized -- almost
exclusively from drug offenders -- but under current law they are
supposed to turn all seized assets over to the Uniform School Fund.
The bill approved by the Senate would undo that by allowing police to
keep seized goods.

Not that police ever really stopped profiting from asset forfeiture. A
year ago, state auditor Ed Alter found that police continued to keep
asset forfeiture funds rather than obeying state law. Alter had to ask
Attorney General Shurtleff to retrieve nearly $300,000 police had
convinced district court judges to hand over to them. And by all
accounts, Utah law enforcement has done an end-run around the law by
turning over seizures to its federal partners, who in turn kick back a
percentage to the locals.

Still, since July 1, 2003, some $483,500 in seized assets has made its
way to its intended end use, the betterment of education for Utah's
children. They would see no more of it if the bill, SB 175, passes.

"My bill goes right to the heart of preserving Initiative B and even
strengthens it," claimed the bill's sponsor, Sen. Chris Buttars
(R-West Jordan), in a display of verbal audacity before darkly adding
that out-of-staters had funded the initiative. "They added some
language that protected property owners, but the unintended
consequence was the elimination of our efforts at drug
interdiction."

"He has to claim that to get it through," scoffed Salt Lake attorney
Janet Jenson, who coauthored the initiative, "but SB 175 actually
weakens just about every aspect of the law. All the procedural
protections have been gutted. The worst thing is that it would let all
the money go back to law enforcement," she told DRCNet. "The whole
idea was to remove law enforcement's incentive to abuse people's
rights by removing their profit motive. How this could be called an
improvement, I don't know."

But it will be tough to stop, said Jenson. "The attorney general and
his assistants are working full-time to get this undone, at taxpayers'
expense. We'll try to stop it, but it will be hard. We don't get paid
to go sit at the capitol."

While Utah reformers got national help during the initiative campaign,
that help has largely vanished. The only organized opposition to the
bill is Accountability Utah (http://www.accountabilityutah.org), which
is not a drug reform group but a socially conservative grassroots
organization. The group distributed flyers in Sen. Buttars' home
neighborhood over the weekend in which they referred to him as "a
dangerous man."

"We aren't into liberalizing drugs, but we are into due process," said
the group's David Hansen. "We just see this as a real conflict of
interest when police seize goods and then turn around and use them to
fund their own operations. We feel like the drug war is being used to
make war on Americans," he told DRCNet. "SB 175 makes it so the locals
can pick up more federal money by doing more seizures."

Like Jenson, Accountability Utah has limited resources with which to
fend off the "reform," while state officials, law enforcement, and one
of the state's largest newspapers are working to ensure it passes. The
Deseret News waxed positively Orwellian as its editorialists strove to
turn black into white. Asset forfeiture reform has "tied the hands of
local narcotics officers," it claimed, adding that SB 175 is a
"compromise" that "builds upon protections Initiative B gives
citizens" and "refines" the divvying-up of the loot.

"The money now flows through the state treasurer's office for deposit
in the Uniform School Fund," the News noted. "However, little money
has actually come to the state because local law enforcement has begun
partnering with federal law-enforcement and prosecution agencies,
rather than handling cases on their own. Federal agencies aren't
covered by the law's restraints." Clearly, the News sees that the way
to deal with police non-compliance with the law is to reward it. But
that's not the point. The point is that those outside forces that
helped pass the initiative "are led by people who are vocal in their
support for the legalization of drugs" and they "exploited" the
newspaper's presumably dim-witted readers. The News and Attorney
General Shurtleff know better than the state's naive voters.

The bill has now been forwarded to the House Clerk. If it is to be
stopped, something is going to have to happen soon.

Read the bill online at:
http://www.le.state.ut.us/~2004/bills/sbillint/sb0175s02.htm