PROSECUTORS, POLICE RELUCTANTLY COMPLY WITH ASSET SEIZURE LAW

SALT LAKE CITY -- Late last month, a judge ended any hope that Utah law
enforcement agencies might be able to get around Initiative B, the ballot
measure enacted a year and a half ago that requires every dime of revenue
from criminals' seized assets go to the state school fund instead of drug
interdiction.

Now, counties and the state are at loggerheads over logistics, and asset
seizures that once brought millions of dollars to fight the so-called war on
drugs have dwindled to a trickle.

Taking property and money from crooks is still considered a good crime
deterrent, police and prosecutors say. But they ask, why should county
property taxpayers pay for court and administrative costs when the money all
goes to the state? Why can't some of the revenues be diverted back to
prosecutors or to other causes, such as drug courts and treatment programs?

And what about the billionaire activists who are funding such initiatives
around the country? Are they trying incrementally to legalize drugs, or
hamstring drug interdiction?

"If these people don't want forfeitures, I've got to ask what their motives
are," said Utah Deputy Attorney General Kirk Torgensen.

Voters approved Initiative B in November 2000 by a 69 percent margin. The
new law says all proceeds from assets seized from criminals must go to the
state's Uniform School Fund. It made it more difficult for agencies to seize
property by adding new layers of due process in criminal and civil
prosecutions.

Utah can no longer receive its former 80 percent share of assets federal
agents seize in Utah. Those proceeds now go elsewhere in the nation.

The Utah Uniform Forfeiture Procedures Act went into effect on March 29,
2001.

Late last month, 3rd District Judge Tyrone Medley ruled that Salt Lake
County District Attorney David Yocom improperly gave the revenues from three
drug busts to law enforcement agencies.

Three days before the ruling, a public interest law firm based in
Washington, D.C., filed notice that it intended to sue Attorney General Mark
Shurtleff unless he got county prosecutors to comply with the forfeiture
law.

A state audit found that 28 cases involving $238,000 in cash and property
proceeds should have gone to the state in fiscal year 2002. An additional
$250,000 seized in 2002 but not processed until 2003 also were owed to the
state, the audit said.

West Valley City Police, the Weber-Morgan Strike Force, Salt Lake City
Police narcotics division and Midvale Police were responsible for the
$238,000, with Weber-Morgan accounting for $200,509 of the total. Farmington
and Layton police had the $250,000.

The agencies are now turning the proceeds over to the state treasurer's
office, but not without some grumbling.

West Valley City Assistant Police Chief Craig Gibson said he'd like to just
give all the information they have to state officials, and let them deal
with it.

He likened the situation to the story of The Little Red Hen, where the
hardworking hen does all the work of baking the bread while also saving her
friends from the dastardly fox.

"If we're going to do all the case work, all the seizure work, and then turn
over all the money to them, that doesn't seem fair," Gibson said.

Medley's ruling applied only to the 3rd District, but Yocom and other
prosecutors agree that their court fight is over.

They still want help with administrative costs.

"We are providing free legal services to the state of Utah," Yocom said.
"Property taxes from Salt Lake County is where I get that money, so (those)
taxpayers end up eating the whole cost of it."

Thousands of crimes other than drug dealing are subject to forfeiture,
including bank fraud, telemarketing fraud, bribery and copyright
infringement, said Assistant U.S. Attorney Richard Daynes.

Last year, Utah lost close to $4 million in federal forfeiture money, plus
untold millions in federal grants based on agencies' performance in
collecting forfeiture proceeds, Daynes said.

While police agencies still are turning forfeiture cases over to the feds,
who will send the proceeds to agencies elsewhere in the country, local
forfeitures "have pretty much dried up," Yocom said.

The Uniform School Fund "is a great cause," that made the initiative a
winner, he said. But he'd rather spend his budget on violent crime, child
abuse and major fraud prosecutions.

"Doing forfeitures is way down the line in my priorities," Yocom said. "I
don't see anywhere in the law where it says we have to do them."

Weber County Attorney Mark DeCaria said his office would continue to do
forfeiture cases. "It may be at a reduced level," he said. "We're not
required to go after (forfeitures). But we don't want drug dealers to
profit. It just sticks in our craw."

Salt Lake City attorney Janet Jenson is tired of all the whining.

"I'm sorry they have administrative expenses. But it's no different from any
other crime," she said. "They are law enforcement. They serve all of us."

Jenson helped draft Initiative B after the California-based Campaign for New
Drug Policies contacted her through a friend.

That organization is the initiative wing of the national Drug Policy
Alliance, which largely is funded by three billionaires: international
financier George Soros, car insurance magnate Peter Lewis and University of
Phoenix founder John Sperling.

The trio's main goals are to end prosecutions of sick and dying people who
use marijuana to ease pain or increase appetite; allow nonviolent drug
possession convicts to receive treatment instead of prison terms; and reform
asset forfeiture laws to impose higher prosecution standards, protect
property rights and eliminate financial incentives in law enforcement.

Utah's Initiative B embodied the latter goal, especially the property rights
protections.

Jenson said she and the others who drafted the measure considered allowing
some forfeiture funds to go to drug treatment instead of sending all of it
to schools. But Jenson said research showed Utah residents don't tend to
consider drug addiction a sickness needing treatment, but rather moral
failure deserving punishment.

The measure's drafters excluded law enforcement from the proceeds to
eliminate any whiff of financial incentive for criminal arrests.

In the end, overwhelming voter support showed Utah got the law it wanted,
said Ethan Nadelmann, the former Princeton professor and war on drugs
opponent who got Soros, Lewis and Sperling to back his organization's
efforts.

"You don't look at ballot initiatives to convince the public, or take them
somewhere they don't already want to go," Nadelmann said. "This was an area
where the public supported reform but politicians were timid."

And no, the initiative backers didn't intend to dry up forfeitures
altogether, nor do they want to legalize drugs, said Dave Frattello,
Campaign for New Drug Policies spokesman.

"We've been accused of that all the time," he said. "The initiative still
acknowledged the government had the right to take property. We see a middle
area between legalizing drugs and the war on drugs. Judge us by what's in
the bills we sponsor."