Initiative would limit police forfeiture powers

Associated Press

OLYMPIA — An initiative filed Thursday would limit the power of police agencies to seize and sell the assets of people suspected of drug crimes.

The initiative, which does not have a number yet, would require a conviction before such property could be sold.

Backers point to cases such as that of Judith Roderick, a Lacey tax consultant who returned from a cruise four years ago to find police waiting at the airport.

She was arrested and sheriff’s deputies seized her computers, tax software, client records and two motorcycles. They also cleaned out four bank accounts, causing outstanding checks to bounce.

Roderick had done $500 worth of routine work on a land trust for a tax client whom police suspected of drug dealing. Thurston County sheriff’s investigators suspected her of money laundering.

All charges were later dismissed, but Roderick says her business was devastated and she still hasn’t climbed out of a hole of debt, despite a $200,000 settlement from Thurston County.

"They need to know that somebody’s guilty before they seize their assets," Roderick said. "It’s not right that they can just go into somebody’s home and take their belongings."

The initiative would toughen the legal standards for forfeiture. And it would send the money into a state education fund and to drug-treatment programs. Law enforcement agencies in Washington now keep 90 percent of what they seize.

"Innocent until proven guilty is a cornerstone of American law, and this is a way to circumvent it," said Erne Lewis, 64, a retired Olympia architect and salmon farmer. He’s one of the leaders of Liberty Initiatives, the group that filed the measure with the Secretary of State’s Office.

The campaign will need more than 200,000 signatures by the end of the year. The initiative would go first to lawmakers, who could make the proposal law or send it to voters in November 2002.

In Washington, police agencies have seized a combined total of nearly $43 million in suspected drug property over the past six years, according to figures on file with the state treasurer.

The money gives police an incentive to seize items at the time of an arrest, regardless of whether they think a criminal conviction will stick, said David Brody, assistant professor of criminal justice at Washington State University’s Spokane campus.

Similar initiatives have been approved in Oregon and Utah.

This spring, lawmakers in Olympia balked at a bill that would have accomplished what the initiative proposes.

A more modest proposal, forcing police to prove that an item is drug-related, was recently signed into law by Gov. Gary Locke. The bill also requires police to pay legal fees if they lose.

"People don’t get lawyers to fight forfeitures now because they can’t afford to," said Gerard Sheehan, a lobbyist with the American Civil Liberties Union, which helped write the initiative.

Law enforcement agencies say forfeiture is a potent weapon, allowing them to hit drug dealers in the wallet. They call cases like Roderick’s the exception.

Former Spokane County Sheriff Larry Erickson, who now heads the Washington Association of Sheriffs and Police Chiefs, has said banning forfeitures would be tantamount to telling bank robbers they can keep the loot.