Sharing the drug money - activists demand share of forfeiture assets

Progressive, The, June, 1997 by Mike Ervin

Chicago

Community activists around the country are demanding a share of assets from police seizures in drug cases. Recent changes in the law have led police to seize huge amounts of property from people charged with drug-related crimes.

Some neighborhood groups including National People's Action, are insisting on a percentage of the take. A 1994 federal law permits police departments to use up to 15 percent of their property seizures to fund neighborhood-rebuilding initiatives.

But sharing of forfeitures is voluntary. Police departments don't have to contribute a cent, and are often reluctant to do so.

In Chicago, it took more than two years for community activists to win an agreement with the police department. It took sit-ins in the offices of the mayor and the chief of police.

But in early April, the Chicago Police Department announced it would begin to share 15 percent of seized-asset proceeds with the community. The process for distribution should be in place by June.

Bennie Meeks, a neighborhood activist with the South Austin Coalition in Chicago, considers this a major breakthrough, even though he says the police are low-balling. They are offering a first installment of $38,000. Organizers say the figure should be much higher since records show Chicago police have amassed $1 million annually in asset-forfeiture funds.

Getting the police to admit the full amount of their forfeiture assets is a common problem. Jaci Feldman of National People's Action says, "If they tell us how much they have, they also have to tell us how they spent it. They don't want us to know that."

Sharon McGraw of the Education Safety Organizing Project in Cleveland says her group learned Cleveland police had $2 million in drug-forfeiture assets only because they discovered records in the basement of a penitentiary. But then-police chief John Collins and mayor Mike White refused to yield any money under the federal option. "They said it was discretionary and they absolutely would not share," says McGraw.

Fortunately, Ohio state law requires police departments to share such assets with their communities. Employing tactics similar to those used in Chicago, the Education Safety Organizing Project was finally able to pressure the city of Cleveland to cough up $211,000 for the neighborhood using the state asset-sharing law. The police have promised to set up neighborhood mediation centers with the money.

"It's not a victory. It's a step in the right direction," says McGraw. "None of the money went to the projects we really fought for." The Education Safety Organizing Project had hoped the city would turn the funds over to Cleveland's public schools, which are bankrupt.

In New York City, the Northwest Bronx Community and Clergy Coalition has encountered severe resistance. Nearly three years of pressuring police commissioner Howard Safir and mayor Rudolph Giuliani produced few results. But with an election on the horizon and a Democratic challenger making a campaign issue out of asset sharing, a police spokesman suddenly announced in March that the New York Police Department would put $100,000 in forfeiture money into community-service projects.

The Coalition's vice president Hilda Chavis says that's a pittance.

According to Chavis, the department reported nearly $20 million in forfeiture assets in fiscal year 1995 alone. Considering the hundreds of neighborhood organizations in New York, she says, "That's not enough to pay for postage."