Police Forces Keep the Take The "loot" that's coming back to police forces all over the nation has redefined law-enforcement success. It now has a dollar sign in front of it. For nearly eighteen months, undercover Arizona State Troopers worked as drug couriers driving nearly 13 tons of marijuana from the Mexican border to stash houses around Tucson. They hoped to catch the Mexican suppliers and distributors on the American side before the dope got on the streets. // But they overestimated their ability to control the distribution. Almost every ounce was sold the minute they dropped it at the houses. // Even though the troopers were responsible for tons of drugs getting loose in Tucson, the man who supervised the setup still believes it was worthwhile. It was ``a success from a cost-benefit standpoint,'' says former assistant attorney-general John Davis. His reasoning: It netted 20 arrests and at least $3 million for the state forfeiture fund. ``That kind of thinking is what frightens me,'' says Steve Sherick, a Tucson attorney. ``The government's thirst for dollars is overcoming any long-range view of what it is supposed to be doing, which is fighting crime.'' // George Terwilliger III, associate deputy attorney general in charge of the U.S. Justice Department's program emphasizes that forfeiture does fight crime, and ``we're not at all apologetic about the fact that we do benefit (financially) from it.'' // In fact, Terwilliger wrote about how the forfeiture program financially benefits police departments in the 1991 Police Buyer's Guide of Police Chief Magazine. Between 1986 and 1990, the U.S. Justice Department generated $1.5 billion from forfeiture and estimates that it will take in $500 million this year, five times the amount it collected in 1986. // District attorney's offices throughout Pennsylvania handled $4.5 million in forfeitures last year; Allegheny County (ED: Pgh is in Allegheny County) $218,000, and the city of Pittsburgh, $191,000 -- up from $9,000 four years ago. // Forfeiture pads the smallest towns coffers. In Lexana, Kan, a Kansas City suburb of 29,000, ``we've got about $250,000 moving in court right now,'' says narcotic detective Don Crohn. // Despite the huge amounts flowing to police departments, there are few public accounting procedures. Police who get a cut of the federal forfeiture funds must sign a form saying merely they will use it for ``law enforcement purposes.'' // To Philadelphia police that meant new air conditioning. In Warren County, N.J., it meant use of a forfeited yellow Corvette for the chief assistant prosecutor. // {At this point in the article there is a picture of three people in an empty apartment, with the following caption: Judy Mulford, 31, and her 13-year old twins, Chris, left, and Jason, are down to essentials in their Lake Park, Fla., home, which the government took in 1989 after claiming her husband, Joseph, stored cocaine there. Neither parent has been criminally charged, but in April a forfeiture jury said Mrs. Mulford must forfeit the house she bought herself with an insurance settlement. The Mulfords have divorced, and she has sold most of her belongings to cover legal bills. She's asked for a new trial and lives in the near-empty house pending a decision. }

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* Origin: Shark's Mouth 313-658-1110 750 MEGS Dual Amiga/IBM (23:313/108)