WATERLOO --- Federal authorities have taken steps toward seizing the
house of a Waterloo physician who was arrested after police found
almost $1 million worth of methamphetamine.
The U.S. Attorneys Office for Northern Iowa filed a forfeiture action
against the home of Dr. Mark Louviere, 50, at 343 Four Seasons Drive,
in federal court in Cedar Rapids Tuesday.
Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, said the filing
is to put people with a claim to the property on notice, and the
government doesn't seek to physically take possession of it at this
time.
Louviere was arrested April 3 after police found meth and firearms in
his home and more than 11 pounds of meth in a neighbor's house that he
was looking after, authorities said.
Associated
Press
By
JUAN A. LOZANO 04.17.07, 9:50 PM ET
The
widow of Enron Corp.
founder Kenneth Lay says that she, not her husband, is the owner of
nearly $13
million in assets the federal government is trying to seize.
The
assets are the
target of a civil forfeiture action against his estate by the federal
government
in its efforts to recover $12.7 million it claims were "proceeds of the
fraud proven in the criminal case against Lay."
Federal
prosecutors were
forced to file the civil action after Lay's convictions for his role in
Enron's
collapse were vacated following his death last year.
In
a court filing
Monday, his widow, Linda Lay, asserted she is the "rightful owner" of
the assets the government is trying to seize.
Prosecutors
want to take
$2.5 million of the value of the couple's condominium in one of
Houston's most
exclusive high-rises, $10.2 million from a partnership named for both
of the
Lays, and nearly $23,000 in a bank account.
Linda
Lay's attorney,
David Jones, said in the filing that Kenneth Lay's 50 percent share of
both the
condominium and the bank account were transferred to his client after
the Enron
founder's death.
"Mr.
Lay owned no
interest in the partnership at the time of his death," Jones said.
In
his will, Kenneth Lay
left all of his assets to his wife.
A
spokesman for the
Justice Department did not immediately return a telephone call seeking
comment
late Tuesday.
Kenneth
Lay, 64, died of
heart disease July 5 while vacationing in Aspen, Colo. He had been
convicted in
May of 10 counts of fraud, conspiracy and lying to banks in two
separate cases.
In
October, U.S.
District Judge Sim Lake said Lay's death vacated his conviction on
fraud and
conspiracy charges because Lay couldn't challenge the conviction.
Lake's
ruling stopped
the government's efforts through the criminal courts to seek millions
of
dollars in ill-gotten gains prosecutors allege Lay pocketed by
participating in
Enron's fraud.
Enron,
once the nation's
seventh-largest company, crumbled into bankruptcy proceedings in
December 2001
when years of accounting tricks could no longer hide billions in debt
or make
failing ventures appear profitable.
Enron's
collapse wiped
out thousands of jobs, more than $60 billion in market value and more
than $2
billion in pension plans.
Copyright
2007
Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be
published
broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed
The last person who admitted handling $11,141.25 missing from a drug forfeiture was a drug task force member for former Muskogee County District Attorney John David Luton, according to the current DA.
Luton reported the missing money to the OSBI on March 23, 2006. The cash was seized from Marcus Walker in 2001.
“The money did exist in this office, and one particular drug task force member admitted having the money and said he placed it on another employee’s desk, saying that was the last time he saw it,” Moore said.
Moore said the secretary — on whose desk the task force officer said he placed the money — told investigators she never saw the money.
The task force member couldn’t remember what time of year, let alone what month or day, he put the money on the desk, Moore said.
Luton earlier said after he realized the funds were missing that he implemented new safeguards to keep it from happening again.
He said he and his secretary began counting the money together and independently, then would go together to the County Treasurer’s Office to deposit it. They would watch as the treasurer’s representative counted the money and then would get a receipt, Luton said.
A 2004 state audit of Luton’s office cited funds from six forfeiture cases filed during the years 2000 and 2001 were “neither receipted nor deposited until June 9, 2004.
Moore said he will refer the OSBI investigative report to the Attorney General’s Office. Because of a bitter campaign with Luton, he did not want to make a decision on filing charges against one of Luton’s former employees and have that construed by some as a conflict of interest.
April 11, 2007
An Oakland County judge sent a Clarkston businessman to prison Wednesday morning, more than seven years after his controversial conviction on racketeering and drug charges.
Joseph Puertas, who turns 80 next week, chewed gum silently as Judge Colleen O’Brien reissued his sentence of two to 14 years in prison. Dressed in a golf shirt and slacks, Puertas stood and placed his hands behind his back as sheriff deputies handcuffed him and led him from the courtroom.
Assistant Prosecutor John Pallas said Puertas had exhausted his
appeals in both state and federal court and no longer was entitled to
bond.
“The defendant must immediately begin serving the sentence imposed upon
him by this court,” Pallas said.
Police arrested Puertas in December 1997 at the family business, the
Mega Bowl in Orion Township. The case hinged on the testimony of a
crack cocaine addict who said he bought drugs from Puertas.
But investigators found no drugs when they raided the bowling alley,
Puertas' home and the homes of his family members. They used drug
forfeiture laws to confiscate $2 million in cash and jewelry from safes
and forced the sale of the bowling alley bringing the total forfeiture
to about $5 million.
Lawyers for Puertas had asked the judge to continue the bond to review
their claim that he received ineffective representation during his
trial but O’Brien rejected the request.
Puertas has maintained his innocence since the conviction, and his
lawyers have argued the investigation was corrupt. At one point,
O’Brien threw out the conviction ruling that investigators withheld
evidence that could have changed the case, but the state appeals court
reinstated it.
“To send a dying, 80-year-old man to prison on what everyone knows was
a corrupt investigation is really tragic,” said Robyn Frankel, an
appeals lawyer for Puertas.
Contact JOHN WISELY at jwisely@freepress.com.
Business Day (Johannesburg)
OPINION
April 11, 2007
Posted to the web April 11, 2007
Jonny Steinberg
Johannesburg
THE Constitutional Court is seldom more interesting than when it is divided. In Mohunram v The National Director of Public Prosecutions, handed down last month, the judges were as close to evenly split as they can be -- six to five. The question that divided them is one that is increasingly coming to define our national identity: what measure of pain is the state permitted to inflict upon wrongdoers in its quest to contain crime? The matter at hand was how aggressive asset forfeiture can get before it violates the right to property. Kumarnath Mohunram was a small-town businessman from Vryheid. From one part of his commercial premises he ran a glass and aluminium business. From the other he ran 57 gambling machines. In 2001, he was charged with running a casino without a licence. Under criminal law, he paid R88500 in admission of guilt fines. His gambling machines, worth R285000, were seized and destroyed.
So much for the criminal law. Next, the public prosecutor launched a civil case against Mohunram under SA's asset forfeiture law, which permits the state to confiscate property used to commit a crime, and assets deemed to be proceeds of crime. The civil court ordered the forfeiture of Mohunram's premises, including the part from which he ran his legitimate business, on the grounds that they had been used as instruments of crime.
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The matter that divided the Constitutional Court was whether this robust use of asset forfeiture law violated Mohunram's right to property. The majority said that it did. In two separate judgments, Dikgang Moseneke and Albie Sachs said the purpose of asset forfeiture law was to go after big fish: racketeering, extortion, large-scale money laundering. Gutting a minnow like Mohunram strayed too far from the law's purpose. Besides, the criminal law had already dealt with him. Nailing him again with the civil law was gratuitous, a greedy lunge for a bigger piece of him.
The minority judgment, penned by acting constitutional court judge Belinda van Heerden, begged to differ. The statute states quite clearly, she argued, that asset forfeiture's reach extends beyond organised crime. It explicitly lists illegal gambling as an offence to which forfeiture applies. And among the express purposes of forfeiture is to deter people from using their property as instruments of crime. Van Heerden's judgment is a model of clarity. It gives the prosecution service a crisp interpretation of the law, and thus an easy guide from which to conduct its business. The two judgments that constitute the majority are messy and opaque: they pass on to the prosecution and the lower courts a great deal of confusion.
Yet if Moseneke's and Sachs's judgments are not as elegant as Van Heerden's, they are far wiser, for they have gone some way in teaching a thoughtless legislature something about law-drafting. It is instructive to recall the context that gave birth to civil asset forfeiture. It of course has different roots in different jurisdictions, but one of the origins of the current fashion can be traced to March 1982, when a man named Pio La Torre, head of the Communist Party in Sicily, appealed to Italy's parliament to make it possible to confiscate the assets of known mafiosi if it could be shown that they were acquired with proceeds of crime.
The context was this: the mafia controlled Sicily's construction industry and most of its capital markets. Using these instruments, they had effectively taken control of the island's public policy, from urban design to policing. Public officials who crossed them were systematically murdered. If only, La Torre thought aloud, we could follow the money trail from drugs and racketeering to the construction companies and the banks; and if only we could bring these companies and banks down, we could transfer control of public policy back to democratic institutions. Weeks after he made his appeal, La Torre was assassinated.
By the time SA came to contemplate forfeiture, it was so much in fashion it was considered almost obligatory. Organised crime was the greatest threat to fledgling democratic states like ours, we were told. If we do not want public policy to be hijacked the way it was in Sicily, we need state-of-the-art enforcement.
The justice department drafted the law in the late 1990s. At precisely that time, the legislature had begun in earnest to throw the kitchen sink at SA's crime wave. Parliament was behaving like the figure in a music box; open its lid and it would pop up and sing for more punishment.
Handed yet another weapon -- asset forfeiture -- the legislature couldn't help itself. The title of the act sticks close to the original purpose of asset forfeiture: "to introduce measures to combat organised crime, money laundering and criminal gang activities". Yet by the time the drafters got round to the meat of the legislation, they had, in their excitement, forgotten all about its purpose. They chucked in every crime they could think of, including any offence that carries a jail term of more than a year.
Van Heerden read the statute with faultless rigour. The title of the act, she said, is "incorrect" and "unfortunate", since "the wording of the act as a whole makes it clear that its ambit is not in fact limited to so-called organised criminal offences".
Moseneke and Sachs chose another path: hold on, they told the legislature. You may have forgotten the title of your own statute by the time you'd finished writing it, but we're going to hold you to it nonetheless. You can list as many crimes as you like, but unless the crime in question "has some rational link with racketeering, money laundering and criminal gang activities", asset forfeiture runs the risk of being disproportionate and thus unconstitutional. Hence, Mohunram keeps his property.
Unfortunately, it is sloppy law. Just a few months ago, the court okayed forfeiture proceedings against a lone entrepreneur who manufactured tik. No evidence was produced that he was a member of an organised syndicate, a racketeer, or a gang member. Yet the court ruled that civil forfeiture was constitutionally permissible.It has thus created a wide grey zone in which prosecutors cannot know whether their actions are permissible. Prosecutors will thus make narrow and conservative choices. But perhaps that is a good thing. The legislature of the late 1990s was unhinged. It didn't have the means to make our justice system work better. So it did the one thing it could do: rip the guts out of the few wrongdoers caught. That's the task to which it almost turned asset forfeiture. But that is not what asset forfeiture is for.
--Steinberg is a freelance journalist.
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| Copyright © 2007 Business Day. All rights reserved. Distributed by AllAfrica Global Media (allAfrica.com). Click here to contact the copyright holder directly for corrections -- or for permission to republish or make other authorized use of this material. |
Enron
leader's widow insists cash and property can't be taken away
Copyright
2007 Houston Chronicle
The
widow of former Enron Chairman Ken Lay wants a judge to toss out the
federal government's push to seize nearly $13 million in cash and
property that prosecutors claim is tied to crimes.
In
a court filing, lawyers for Linda Lay argued that the government fails
to sufficiently bolster allegations that the cash and property in
question was tainted and therefore subject to seizure.
At
the very least, she argued, the government isn't entitled to seize the
upscale Houston condominium she shared with her husband, whether or not
part of its mortgage was paid off with tainted funds.
"Civil
forfeiture is a harsh remedy. Because forfeiture has the potential to
deny innocent owners of their right to own property free from
governmental interference, courts have historically viewed forfeitures
warily," the filing said.
Justice
Department spokeswoman Jaclyn Lesch declined to comment Wednesday on
last week's filing.
But
the government alleges in a lengthy affidavit filed with the civil
forfeiture action that if a portion of the money that paid for the
condominium was tainted as alleged, the property is fair game for
seizure.
The
government contends Ken Lay gained $99 million from criminal activity,
mostly from repaying Enron loans with company stock throughout 2001
when the company was in financial turmoil. Prosecutors say they can
trace and therefore recover more than $12 million of the allegedly
ill-gotten gains.
That
amount includes $2.5 million Lay used to pay off the condominium's
mortgage in late 2001; $10 million that was controlled by a partnership
named for the couple; and about $22,000 in a bank account.
Linda
Lay argues the government vaguely seeks to tie the allegedly tainted
funds to money laundering, a crime her husband was never charged with.
The
government says in court papers that the condominium "represents
property involved in money laundering" because Ken Lay deposited funds
from his sales of Enron stock back to the company in one of two bank
accounts, and then withdrew enough to pay off the mortgage.
Linda
Lay's filing counters that in order for the government to seize the
entire condominium, prosecutors must show that the property was
substantially connected to a money laundering deal or show that its
full value was derived from proceeds of a crime.
The
condominium's appraised value is $6 million, according to Harris County
records.
"The
condominium was purchased before the allegedly tainted deposits were
made, and Mr. Lay and his wife lived there," her filing said.
Federal
prosecutors initially sought to seize tens of millions of dollars from
Lay after he was convicted in May last year of 10 counts of fraud and
conspiracy in two cases. Lay died six weeks later, before he was
sentenced or could appeal, so a judge erased his convictions and the
indictment against him.
With
no convictions on which to base a forfeiture stemming from crimes,
prosecutors filed the civil case on the same October day that Lay's
co-defendant, former Enron CEO Jeff Skilling, was sentenced to 24 years
in prison on 19 criminal counts.
The
elimination of the criminal case means prosecutors would have to prove
that Lay committed crimes if the civil action goes before a jury, as
both sides have requested.
Filings
in the Lay forfeiture action since October have noted that both sides
have been in talks to reach a settlement, though none has emerged.
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Thursday,
April 19, 2007 7:03 AM CDT
By
JEFF REINITZ, Courier Staff Writer
WATERLOO
--- Federal authorities have taken steps toward seizing the house of a
Waterloo physician who was arrested after police found almost $1
million worth of methamphetamine.
The U.S. Attorneys Office for Northern Iowa filed a forfeiture action
against the home of Dr. Mark Louviere, 50, at 343 Four Seasons Drive,
in federal court in Cedar Rapids Tuesday.
Bob Teig, a spokesman for the U.S. Attorney's Office, said the filing
is to put people with a claim to the property on notice, and the
government doesn't seek to physically take possession of it at this
time.
Louviere was arrested April 3 after police found meth and firearms in
his home and more than 11 pounds of meth in a neighbor's house that he
was looking after, authorities said.
Last week in state court he was formally charged with drug conspiracy
charges.
The house and land are valued at $272,4600, according to Black Hawk
County property records, and names on the deed are Mark Louviere and
Heidi Bonthus. The one-and-a-half story home was built in 1952 and
boasts a fireplace.
The goverment alleges the property was used or intended to be used to
facilitate violations of United States drug laws.
According to court records, the government doesn't seek to actually
seize the house at this time but instead wants to preserve the property
for possible forfeiture later.
It is asking for authorization to send agents with the U.S. Marshals
Service to conduct and inspection an inventory of the house and have it
appraised.
Controlled
meth buy
Court records filed in connection with the forfeiture case give
additional details about the doctor's arrest and the amount of meth
that was recovered.
During the week of April 2, a confidential informant working with the
Tri-County Drug Enforcement Task Force bought methamphetamine from Dr.
Louviere at Louviere's house, records state.
Then on April 3, after the monitored transaction, Task Force officers
got a search warrant for the house, and a patrol officer pulled over
Louviere during a traffic stop.
The officer found 3 grams of meth on Louviere's person as well as 3.6
grams of CTX, which is a "cutting agent" added to drugs to increase its
weight for sale.
While searching Louviere's house, agents found 892.3 grams --- about
1.97 pounds --- of meth, seven firearms. gallon-sized Ziploc bags,
syringes and scales, court records state.
Louviere remains in the Black Hawk County Jail with bond set at $1.6
million.
Contact Jeff Reinitz at (319) 291-1578 or jeff.reinitz@wcfcourier.com.
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Joe Nacchio's reversal of
fortune
SENTENCING
By
Andy Vuong
Denver Post Staff Writer
Article
Last Updated: 04/21/2007 04:07:05 PM MDT
Experts
say if prosecutors can prove that Joe Nacchio's wife, Anne Esker, used
the $90 million that Nacchio allegedly transferred to her in February
2002 to purchase this $9.5 million mansion in Jupiter, Fla., in 2005,
officials could seize it despite Florida's homestead exemption. (Post
file)
The
insider-trading conviction of Joe Nacchio will probably put the former
Qwest chief executive behind bars and lead to the depletion of a
personal fortune once pegged at more than $500 million, experts say.
It
is a fate other former high-level executives, such as Enron's Jeffrey
Skilling and WorldCom's Bernie Ebbers, faced after conviction on
securities fraud and other charges.
"Once
you're convicted, the drain on your assets is very substantial," said
white-collar-crime expert Peter Henning.
Nacchio's
homes in New Jersey, his wife's $9.5 million mansion in Florida and the
$90 million he allegedly transferred to her in 2002 could all be fair
game for the government as it tries to recover at least $52 million in
ill-gotten gains and possibly millions more in interest.
"If
you can't find the fruits of the crime, they can go after any other
assets of his to satisfy that $52 million forfeiture order," said
Henning, a professor at Wayne State University Law School in Detroit.
Nacchio
could also be hit with up to $19 million in fines, though Henning said
the fine will probably be $1 million or less if the judge orders
Nacchio to forfeit the entire $52 million.
U.S.
District Judge Edward Nottingham will sentence Nacchio on July 27 in
Denver federal court. A day-long hearing is scheduled so Nacchio, his
family and others can speak to Nottingham before Nacchio is sentenced.
On
Thursday, a jury of eight men and four women found Nacchio guilty on 19
counts of illegal insider trading connected to his sale of $52 million
in Qwest stock in April and May 2001. He was acquitted on 23 other
insider-trading counts.
Nacchio's
attorney Herbert Stern vowed to appeal.
Nacchio
still faces civil lawsuits from shareholders and the Securities and
Exchange Commission, which is seeking the $216 million in salary,
stock-sale proceeds, bonuses and other compensation Nacchio received
from 1999 to 2002.
The
SEC could theoretically seek triple that amount in damages, though the
majority of its cases settle for less than the initial lawsuit amount,
Henning said.
"When
you throw in the shareholder lawsuits and the SEC cases, most of these
defendants lose their wealth," Henning said.
Ebbers,
convicted of fraud, conspiracy and other charges in 2005, forfeited
nearly all of his assets to settle a civil suit. He surrendered his
home in Mississippi and stakes in a lumber company, a marina, a golf
course, a rice farm, a hotel and other real estate. Skilling parted
with his home in Texas as part of $45 million forfeiture plan after he
was convicted of conspiracy, insider trading and other charges.
According
to testimony from his former financial adviser, Nacchio had a net worth
of $547 million in December 2000 - though roughly half of that was
based on unvested options, many of which went unexercised.
Prosecutors
say he transferred $90 million to his wife, Anne Esker, in February
2002. She purchased a $9.5 million mansion in Jupiter, Fla., in 2005,
according to property records.
Experts
say if prosecutors can prove she used the money Nacchio allegedly
transferred to her to purchase the mansion, they could seize it despite
Florida's homestead exemption.
"If
they can track the fraudulently obtained residence, then it's subject
to forfeiture," said William Michaelson, a certified fraud examiner in
West Palm Beach, Fla.
It's
likely the government will work out some sort of payment arrangement
with Nacchio, Henning said.
The
forfeited money would probably go to a fund to repay shareholders who
bought Qwest stock during the timeframe of the illegal trades - between
April 26, 2001, and May 29, 2001.
Fines
would either go to the fund or the U.S. Treasury.
Nottingham
could technically sentence Nacchio to 190 years in prison based on the
maximum penalty of 10 years for each of the 19 guilty counts.
However,
a prison term of eight to 10 years for all 19 counts is more likely,
based on federal sentencing guidelines, which consider the type of
crime, the money involved and other factors, Henning said. Others say
the prison sentence could reach 15 years.
Federal
statutes allow prisoners to be released after serving 85 percent of
their term for good behavior.
Nottingham
will decide at sentencing whether Nacchio will begin serving his
sentence while his appeal is in the works.
In
2005, Adelphia Communications founder John Rigas was released on bail
pending appeal of conspiracy, bank fraud and securities fraud
convictions. Skilling, however, is in prison during his appeal.
"Traditionally,
released pending appeal has been granted very, very rarely," said
former federal prosecutor Kirby Behre. "It's only (granted) if there's
a significant issue to be raised on appeal."
Staff
writer Andy Vuong can be reached at 303-954-1209 or avuong@denverpost.com.
· Money that Joe Nacchio forfeits connected to
his criminal convictions would probably go to a fund to repay
shareholders who bought Qwest stock during the timeframe of the illegal
trades - between April 26, 2001, and May 29, 2001.
· Criminal fines would either go to the fund or
the U.S. Treasury.
· Additional money and assets then would
probably be used to settle civil lawsuits filed by the Securities and
Exchange Commission and Qwest shareholders.
· Any claim by Qwest for repayment of legal fees
advanced to Nacchio would come after that.
Source:
Peter Henning, Wayne State University law professor
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FEAR's
newly expanded Brief Bank II & Private Collection now contains:
• 169
motions, pleadings and briefs, and
• 26
documents in the Private Collection -- including 2 complete Department
of Justice manuals, one totaling over 300 pages; plus newly added
Department of Justice manuals released in 2006: Asset Forfeiture Policy
Manual (247 pages of case law updates and a completely new section on
settlements);
Selected
Federal Asset Forfeiture Statutes Including Statutes Amended by the
Trafficking Victims Protection Reauthorization Act, the Stop
Counterfeiting in Manufactured Goods Act, and the USA PATRIOT
Improvement and Reauthorization Act; and Money Laundering Statutes and
Related Materials, Including Statutes Amended by the USA PATRIOT
Improvement and
Reauthorization
Act.
All
of the materials in Brief Bank II are cross-indexed by issue, pleading
type, author, and case name.
All
of the Private Collection documents are cross-indexed by issue, author
and publication.
The
links are working and it is now fully functional.
Check
out the issue index of either collection and you'll see the value of
this research tool!
******************************************************
******************************************************
******************************************************
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City police lavished
$2.6m on leased cars
New
restriction placed on drug seizure funds
By Suzanne Smalley, Globe Staff | April 30, 2007
The
Boston Police Department spent $2.6 million from sales of property
seized from drug dealers to lease sport utility vehicles, sedans, and
other vehicles for officers over the past eight years in a program that
department officials now acknowledge was wasteful.
Department
officials said that while the vehicles were assigned for undercover
investigators trying to fit into the drug scene, the vehicles also
ended up with other officers, including a handful of supervisors who
were not directly involved in investigations and who drove them home.
The
department, which eliminated the leasing program in February, declined
to provide the names of the officers who were assigned the vehicles,
saying officers' safety could be jeopardized if their identities are
disclosed. Police also would not identify the makes and models of the
leased vehicles.
Department
data obtained by the Globe under the state's open records law show that
while most of the vehicles went to the drug investigations unit, 19 of
72 vehicles in 2005 went to employees in other units, including one
each to arson, CrimeStoppers, and the police commissioner's office. In
2004, 57 of 74 vehicles went to the drug unit; 17 went to other units,
including one for the family justice division and two for the homicide
division.
The
leasing program started in 1999 with 28 vehicles, and peaked in 2004
with 74. Police spokeswoman Elaine Driscoll said the SUVs included
Nissans, Fords, and Toyotas.
Christopher
Fox , head of the department's Bureau of Administration and Technology,
said he first noticed the program's spending excesses two years ago and
has been working since then to eliminate it.
"It
was started with the best of intentions," Fox said.
Fox
said he believes that only about 50 vehicles are needed in
investigations and has instructed the department to buy used vehicles
at auction, expected to be usable for two or three years, at $4,000 to
$5,000 each. The newer leased vehicles, by contrast, cost an average of
$7,000 for one-year leases and had to be returned when the lease ended,
he said.
Paul
Joyce, superintendent of the Bureau of Investigative Services, which
leased the vehicles, said they were used for covert surveillance to buy
drugs during stings and to tail drug dealers. He said that by leasing
newer and flashier vehicles than the standard Crown Victoria, officers
could "blend in with the neighborhood surroundings and not draw the
attention of suspects."
"Ultimately,
the program was growing a little too big," he said. "We were using more
assets out of the funds for it. We needed to reevaluate."
Driscoll
could not provide the total amount of money the department has received
from the drug forfeiture funds and what percentage was used to finance
the vehicles over the eight-year period.
However,
documents obtained by the Globe show that the department spent nearly
half of its state drug forfeiture money from 2001 to 2003 on the
leases. The bulk of that fund was spent to defray the cost of criminal
investigations, as well as to pay for conferences and training, the
documents show.
While
state law gives broad discretion to the police commissioner to decide
how to spend the money, it says it is meant to cover the costs of
investigations and provide technical equipment and expertise, but
should not be considered "a source of revenue to meet the operating
needs" of the department.
Unlike
other law enforcement agencies, the department has not given any money
to community groups working on drug and violence prevention.
Suffolk
District Attorney Daniel F. Conley's office, by contrast, gave $50,000
last year in community grants to groups, including the Dorchester Youth
Collaborative and the Codman Square Health Center. Conley's office
spent nearly three-quarters of its $813,875 in asset forfeiture money
to pay prosecutors and rent office space for State Police, and the rest
on computers, cellphones, and other equipment.
In
a statement issued through a spokeswoman, Police Commissioner Edward F.
Davis said he will look at using the drug seizure money differently.
"The
fund is now used for necessary investigative purposes," he said. "I
strongly believe that a percentage should be made available for
community programming, and I am in the process of reviewing that now."
Davis
also said in an interview that after receiving complaints from officers
about the poor condition of the department's vehicle fleet and an
unfair system for distributing vehicles, he wants "to make sure there's
an equitable distribution of cars across the department."
Scott
Harshbarger, who lobbied the Legislature to pass the asset forfeiture
law when he was Middlesex district attorney and was about to become
attorney general in 1989, said the money was intended to finance drug
prosecutions, investigations, education, and prevention.
"It
was not designed to do only hardware for police departments,"
Harshbarger, who is now in private practice, said in a telephone
interview. "The primary function of this money is to be plowed back
into our efforts to reduce drug trafficking and the impact in the
communities most affected by drugs."
Jorge
Martinez, executive director of the Roxbury community organization
Project RIGHT, said he is frustrated by how the money was used,
especially when community distrust is hurting the department's ability
to solve violent crimes.
"It
was not a good use of resources," he said. "If you're going to say that
the mission of the BPD is to strengthen community and police relations,
from a marketing aspect I would have, if I was the commissioner . . .
used some of those resources to provide funding for the
intervention/prevention programs [and] youth activities at the
neighborhood level."
Martinez's
nonprofit group, based in Grove Hall, relies on public funding for its
activities.
The
drug forfeiture fund has generated controversy in Boston before.
In
1992, the Globe reported that the fund was improperly used to
investigate leaks to the news media in the Carol Stuart murder case. In
1995, the Globe's Spotlight Team reported that prosecutors were cutting
deals with major drug traffickers to cash in on their assets quickly
and that the proceeds financed out-of-state conferences and summer
seminars on Nantucket.
In
1989, when the money first became available, Councilor Charles Yancey
proposed that two-thirds be spent on drug treatment, youth programs,
and anticrime programs, and the remainder be given to law enforcement.
The motion was not approved. In the years since, he and other
councilors have not been able to redirect the money to community
programs.
"Those
assets represent, really, blood money that's taken out of various
communities in the city of Boston," said Yancey, a longtime critic of
the Police Department , who represents Dorchester and part of Mattapan.
One of the reasons I proposed the ordinance is to return at least some
of it to the community that suffered the thievery in the first place."
Suzanne
Smalley can be reached at ssmalley@globe.com.
©
Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
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