LAW ENFORCEMENT'S DRUG OF CHOICE

Civil asset forfeiture is the most infamous game in law enforcement.
In its pure form, seizing the luxury cars, boats, homes and cash of
drug dealers can be a useful tool in taking profit out of crime. But
in the real world, far too many police and sheriff's offices use it to
finance and enrich their operations, leading to startling abuses.

Now, this is an old story. Go through newspaper archives across the
country, and you'll find investigative pieces going back more than a
decade documenting problems with police departments' taking people's
stuff for their own use, often without even bothering to charge the
owner with a crime.

No one is immune. Pro basketball player Corie Blount was a victim in
1998, when he was pulled over in Ohio on Christmas Eve for having
tinted windows and no front license plate. His car was searched after
a drug-sniffing dog indicated probable cause.

No drugs were found, but the Ohio State Highway Patrol discovered
$19,000. Though there was no evidence of criminality, the money was
taken and turned over to the Drug Enforcement Administration for
seizure. It took months of negotiations with the federal government to
finally get the money returned.

In the aftermath of this and other such scandals, state legislatures
and even Congress have made some attempts at reform, but law
enforcement has vehemently resisted the only real reform: taking the
profit motive out of seizures by not letting police keep the dough.

Slapping their fingers away from the cookie jar is the only way to
protect against abuse. But police are addicted to this narcotic of
easy money and fancy wheels, and they are not giving up their drug of
choice easily.

In Utah, a highly popular voter-passed initiative in 2000 sent all
proceeds from asset seizures to an education fund. But since then,
local police agencies and prosecutors have done everything possible to
stymie the measure, from going to court to challenge the initiative's
constitutionality (they lost) to simply ignoring it and illegally
keeping the hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Finally, in June, a court ordered the money into the school
fund.

Responding to the ruling, Salt Lake County District Attorney David
Yocom echoed the sentiments of a number of other officials by
predicting the end of local forfeitures. "Doing forfeitures is way
down the line in my priorities," Yocom told The Associated Press.

Astounding. If police and prosecutors don't get to keep the money, if
it goes instead to public education or something equally worthy, they
are not going to bother with seizures?

Funny, I thought forfeitures were done for a law enforcement purpose,
as a way to prevent criminals from living large on their lucre, as a
disincentive to crime. Now, it turns out, it is all about who gets the
money. Well, fancy that.

And this is where the federal government steps in. Numerous states
have enacted laws diverting some or all of asset-seizure profits into
a state general fund or other specialized fund. This is what
legislatures do -- they develop funding priorities for state revenues.
But for nearly 20 years, the federal government has colluded with
local law enforcement to skirt state law and put the money back into
the pockets of the seizing agency.

Under the process known as adoption, the Justice Department actively
encourages local policing agencies to turn over their seized assets.
The department will then do the forfeiture and return 80 percent of
seizure proceeds to the local agency. So for a mere 20 percent off the
top, any pesky state laws can be circumvented.

(Utah's initiative actually was written to eliminate adoptions, but
policing agencies are still sending seizures to the federal government
rather than the state education fund.)

Thanks to a wonderful series by at Kansas City Star reporter Karen
Dillon (www.kcstar.com/projects/drugforfeit), we know something of the
extent of the avarice.

In fiscal 2002, the Justice Department returned $188 million to state
and local police agencies. All this money drives local law enforcement
to find any way to get a piece, even if it means bypassing state
due-process rules.

Some states require a conviction before assets can be forfeited, and
other states don't allow police to seize a primary residence, but none
of those rules exist under federal forfeiture, so local law
enforcement simply sends the seizure cases there.

This unscrupulous pact has been going on for years, but few
politicians, state or federal, have been willing to challenge it.
Police and prosecutors have a grip so tight on this money that no one
and nothing -- not even the law -- can seem to pry it loose.