SCHOOLS FAIL TO GET CONFISCATED CASH

Missouri officials are attempting once again to overhaul state laws
so that millions of dollars of cash confiscated in suspected drug
crimes goes to public education.

State law requires that proceeds from fines and forfeitures be spent
on public education.

But only $10 million of the $71 million in suspected drug money that
law enforcement agencies have seized since 1999 has ended up in
school coffers, according to government records.

Instead, Missouri law enforcement agencies have used a strategy
allowing them to keep drug money by handing it off to a federal law
enforcement agency. A series of news articles in 1999 and 2000
revealed how the federal government kept a portion, 20 percent or
more, and then sent the rest back to the seizing agency to be spent
under federal guidelines.

That was a strategy being used not only in Missouri, but in many other states.

In Missouri, state legislators thought they fixed the problem in 2000
with new legislation. The fix didn't take, they now say.

One reason law enforcement officials say they are continuing to send
the money to the federal government or not seizing drug money at all
is because Missouri laws are too protective of criminal suspects.

Now a task force of law enforcement and education officials, brought
together by Missouri Treasurer Sarah Steelman a year ago, believes it
finally may have an answer with legislation it has drafted.

"It's good for kids, it's good for law enforcement," said Doug
Gaston, deputy treasurer and a former prosecutor, who led the task force.

The bill would eliminate the requirement that property can be
forfeited only after a person has been convicted of a crime. It also
would be quicker to take someone's property — 30 days after a seizure
in many cases.

In addition, the bill would:

# Allow law enforcement agencies to keep up to 50 percent of a
forfeiture to pay for the cost of their investigation. In order for
an agency to recoup its expenses, rules would be set up requiring the
agency to submit its expenses, most likely to the judge overseeing
the forfeiture, officials said.

# Send the rest — 50 percent or more — to a state school fund.

# Require that once the school fund has a balance of $6 million,
additional money go to increase minimum salaries for teachers.

# Require that once minimum salaries for teachers have been taken
care of, the rest of the money would be used for safe school grants
providing for school resource officers, metal detectors, fences and
other safety programs.

"You are talking about big dollars," said Rep. Scott Lipke, chairman
of the crime prevention committee. Lipke, a Jackson Republican, and
Sen. Chris Koster, a Harrisonville Republican, are sponsoring the bill.

Some law enforcement officials said they are agreeable to the 50-50
split because they are eager to provide safety to students and to pay
teachers more.

"We want to make sure that kids can learn in a safe environment,"
said Tim Lewis, the Festus police chief. "Nobody wants to be in a
position where we seem to be making money because we won't. For the
police departments, we just like to help offset some of our costs."

No conviction

Since the 19th century, Missouri has banned law enforcement from
profiting from crime — the fear has been that it would reap abuse.

In addition, to protect civil liberties, Missouri laws have required
that the government can't forfeit a person's cash or property until
that person has been convicted of a crime.

But with the advent of the war on drugs, Missouri laws have been in
conflict with new federal drug laws not requiring a conviction and
allowing law enforcement to keep the proceeds of forfeitures.

To align Missouri's laws with federal laws, the new bill would
eliminate the conviction requirement.

It would make the process of forfeiture speedy. In the past, some
cases took almost two years under state law while authorities waited
to see if a suspect would be convicted.

The new bill would require an officer who seizes cash or property to
issue a ticket to the owner notifying him that it is going to be
forfeited. If the owner does not respond within 30 days, the
prosecutor — without obtaining a judge's approval — can declare the
property forfeited.

Randy Scherr, executive director of the Missouri Association of
Criminal Defense Lawyers, was shocked when he learned about the
proposed changes. Scherr was not invited to sit on the task force. He
said that defense lawyers will follow the bill closely.

Scherr said he believes that state forfeiture laws already were fair
and clear. State laws take more time to follow, but that's because
they provide more protections than federal laws, he said.

Eliminating the conviction provision is dangerous to individual
rights, he said.

"They are suggesting that they want to be able to take people's
property without finding them guilty of some crime," Scherr said. "It
sounds like a total reversal of all the protections the state put in."

Gaston said he believes the bill carries many protections for
individuals who are innocent.

"It's a fine line always because you want to make sure you are
protecting people's civil rights first and foremost," Gaston said.
"But the bottom line — our kids are not getting the money they should
be getting for their education because of this system."

One member of the task force representing education said that
Missouri forfeiture laws are "somewhat antiquated" and that if
schools are to get the money, loosening up state laws appears to be
the only way.

"There is still an incentive for law enforcement to go federal
because it is very difficult for law enforcement to obtain the
assets," said Melissa Randol, general counsel for the Missouri School
Boards Association.

Skirting the law

After the news stories in 1999 and 2000, some law enforcement
agencies, including the Kansas City police, said they would strictly
follow state law. They did not want to appear to be profiting from police work.

But since then, every county seems to be going by its own
interpretation of the law, task force officials said.

As a result, at least $61 million since 1999 has been turned over to
federal agencies. After the federal government takes 20 percent or
more, the money has been returned to police.

Kansas City police are big contributors to the school fund, sending
$1.2 million to schools since 2001. But Kansas City police have
received even more back from federal agencies.

A police spokesman said the department would not comment on the new
bill but would follow its progress.

Mark Hughes, a spokesman for the state treasurer, said he hopes the
bill would remove law enforcement's incentive to avoid using state
laws. For example, Hughes said, he was told that some local officers
after finding a large sum of money during an investigation would don
jackets with "FBI" or "DEA" on the back of them. They then said they
were federal agents and seized the money for the federal government.

In other cases, law enforcement officers weren't seizing property
when it appeared to be a legitimate forfeiture case because they said
that Missouri law was too complicated.

"The (bill from) the treasurer's task force will get us a lot closer
to state law's intended purposes," Hughes said.

In Greene and Lawrence counties in just two months last spring, law
enforcement agencies seized more than $500,000 from cars on the
highway and handed it off to federal agents, said Greene County
Prosecutor Darrell Moore.

That's because there were no drugs found in the vehicles, so there
was no crime to prosecute under state law.

Moore said the new bill would make it easier to take such cases to state court.

"State and local governments are missing out on significant sums of
money," Moore said. Where the money goes

The five Missouri law enforcement agencies that have received the
most forfeiture money from federal agencies since 1999:

St. Louis County Police Department $11,215,448 St.

Louis Metropolitan Police Department $6,028,000

Arnold $4,979,759

Missouri Highway Patrol $3,361,605

Kansas City Police Department $2,578,207

For figures from all police agencies, go to
http://www.usdoj.gov/jmd/afp/02fundreport/index.htm .

Source: U.S. Department of Justice reports to Congress