Laws Likely To Get A Legislative Tweak Instead Of An Overhaul Don't look for any sweeping changes in Missouri drug laws this legislative session. Despite a flurry of bills proposed early in the session when it became clear police weren't following state laws for handling seized drug money, lawmakers now realize the issue is too complex to repair before the session ends in May. Legislators say there are too many unknowns - including how much money is involved. Instead, legislators probably will just tweak current laws this year to assure most of the drug money seized by Missouri law enforcement agencies gets to education, as the laws intend. [continues 733 words]
JEFFERSON CITY - The Missouri Senate will investigate why drug money seized by state and local police has not been turned over to public education. Sen. Edward Quick, president pro tem of the Senate and a Liberty Democrat, said Thursday that he would choose a committee ``very, very soon'' to begin holding hearings on the matter. In the past two weeks a flurry of ballot measures have been proposed to address the diversion of drug money from schools, and Quick said hearings would sort through the facts and help lawmakers think out their remedies. [continues 694 words]
Some Missouri lawmakers are about to take another crack at making police send money they seize in drug crimes to schools. So far, they've had little success. In 1990 the Missouri Supreme Court affirmed a constitutional mandate requiring police to give up the money. The case involved the Odessa School District and more than $1 million seized by the Lafayette County sheriff's office. Just one week later, the U.S. attorney for the Western District of Missouri wrote a letter offering to help local law enforcement officials keep drug money. Jean Paul Bradshaw II encouraged them to file their forfeitures with the U.S. Department of Justice, rather than with the state. [continues 592 words]
How can you find out how much drug money law enforcement is keeping instead of sending to Missouri schools? By looking at public records called DAG-71 reports. There's only one problem: You can't. Law enforcement has constructed a neat Catch-22 to keep DAG-71s closed. It works this way: The Kansas City Police Department, the Missouri Highway Patrol and the Platte County Sheriff's Department all refuse to release the reports. They say the reports, which they must fill out to ask the Drug Enforcement Administration to handle the drug money, belong to the federal agency. [continues 139 words]
Missouri law requires police departments to send drug money they seize through state courts -- and sometimes police do it. But even when they do, police have used the court system to get the money back. Although that may not be a clear violation of state law, it violates the intent of sending drug money to state schools, legal experts say. "They are, in fact, circumventing something that is as important if not more important than the war on drugs, and that is the education of our youth," said Larry Schaffer, a defense attorney who also has worked as a prosecutor. [continues 693 words]
Although law enforcement agencies refused to provide records that would show how much money they were diverting from Missouri schools, The Kansas City Star found 14 such cases in western Missouri. Some of those cases were described in court documents, sometimes generated when a defendant tried to regain money police had seized and turned over to federal agencies. Most of the other cases came from police reports about people whose names appeared on a Kansas City police list of 120 money seizures. [continues 710 words]
Police and federal agencies have diverted millions of dollars from Missouri schoolchildren. Under state law, money seized in drug cases is supposed to go to public school districts, but some police departments have found a simple way to keep the money for their own use. It works like this: When police discover a cache of drug money, they turn it over to a federal agency, which is not subject to state laws. The agency keeps a cut and returns the rest of the money to police. [continues 2391 words]
