The sponsor of an initiative to change the state's forfeiture law says he wants to protect innocent people from being robbed by police trying to pad their budgets.

"It is obscene," said Ernest Lewis, the sponsor of Initiative 256. "One guy lost, literally, a million-dollar airplane because he carried a passenger who carried drugs in his briefcase."

Police say the claims are baloney and that for some departments, the money they receive doesn't amount to much anyway.

"That's ridiculous," John Urquhart, spokesman for the King County Sheriff's Office, said of claims by Lewis and others about innocent people losing their possessions. "Absolutely not. I challenge him to come up with names, dates and times. There are many protections afforded a person whose property is seized."

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