In most Washington cities, police chiefs are able to spend the money they seize from people suspected of drug crimes with broad discretion. But in Spokane, a 2017 ordinance requires that the City Council and police chief agree on how the money is spent.
This year, the two parties are having trouble doing that.
The Spokane Police Department wants to continue using the money for confidential informant payments, drug buys and new undercover vehicles. The drug crisis is out of control, they say, and the people pushing poison into the community need to be taken off the streets.
The City Council's progressive majority is OK with funding those things, but they'd also like to see the money go toward youth anti-drug education, which they see as a more effective tool in combating the drug epidemic. They argue that years of drug buys and dealer arrests have done little to stop the flow of drugs, and that the root causes of the crisis need to be addressed.
On Aug. 29, Council President Breean Beggs — always one for compromise — proposed an amendment that would require that the department's drug forfeiture money be spent equally on those two endeavors. If the cops want $100,000 for confidential informants, they'll also have to put $100,000 toward youth drug education.
Police aren't happy about that and worry the decision will bankrupt the account.
"It's become kind of contentious because it's using the money in a way that we have not typically ever used it before," says Spokane police Maj. Michael McNab.
A CONTROVERSIAL PRACTICE
The money at the center of the debate comes from civil asset forfeiture, a controversial tool that gives law enforcement the power to seize cash and other assets from people suspected of criminal activity — even if they aren't convicted of a crime. All police have to do is show probable cause that the property was either used to facilitate a drug deal or acquired with proceeds from selling drugs.
The proposed amendment would change how the Spokane Police Department spends money in their state drug forfeiture account. The department has other forfeiture accounts that are significantly smaller and funded by other types of crime. There's also a forfeiture account for joint federal operations that is subject to different rules.
The current balance of the department's drug forfeiture account is $625,692. That's pretty small compared to the overall police budget, which mostly comes from the city's general fund. But Brian Kelly, an associate professor of economics at Seattle University who has published research on civil forfeiture, says departments are often more attracted to forfeiture money because it is more flexible and not as bogged down in municipal red tape.
In Spokane, the department's forfeiture spending is already constrained by the 2017 ordinance, which Beggs sponsored in collaboration with then-City Council member Mike Fagan.
The ordinance received a lot of blowback from police at the time. With Beggs' proposed amendment on the horizon, the department worries its hands will be further tied.
Opponents of civil forfeiture argue that the practice incentivizes policing for profit, disproportionately harms low-income communities and gives law enforcement extrajudicial authority to what can amount to stealing people's property. The Institute for Justice, a libertarian nonprofit, gives Washington's civil forfeiture laws a D-minus rating — one of the lowest in the country.
Proponents of civil forfeiture argue that it takes away criminals' financial incentive and provides revenue to offset the significant costs incurred by fighting criminal activity.
Spokane police Capt. Thomas Hendren says he thinks the forfeiture fund is valuable because it uses money from "those that have been profiting off the misery of our citizens" instead of taxpayers money.
GUNS, CASH, CARS — AND A TOILET
Under the 2017 ordinance, Spokane police are required to give the City Council quarterly reports on the source of their civil forfeiture funds. That hasn't always happened. Beggs tells the Inlander that the department only started regularly sending reports in recent years after the City Council began pushing the issue of youth anti-drug education. This is backed up by a March 2021 letter from Council member Lori Kinnear, who wrote that a lack of quarterly reports was leading to a "gap in communication and joint planning for the innovative use of forfeiture funds."
Beggs says that the original ordinance "had no teeth to it." He hopes to change that with his proposed amendment, which says the department is not allowed to spend forfeiture funds in a given quarter until a written report from the same quarter in the previous year has been submitted to City Council.
McNab says the City Council has been receiving quarterly reports for about two years — ever since he's been in his current position. When asked what happened before he took the position, McNab acknowledges the reports weren't sent.
"That was a fairly new law," McNab says. "We had a staffing shortage at the executive level, and we just weren't able to get on top of those in time."
Quarterly forfeiture reports obtained by the Inlander via a records request from the Washington State Treasurer's Office show that most of the stuff Spokane police seize is what you'd expect from drug activity — things like cash, guns, money counters and grow lights. Since 2020, Spokane police have sold 29 seized cars at auctions. They've opted to keep three for themselves.
In recent years, Spokane police have also seized men's watches, rings, an amplifier, miscellaneous gift cards, a camcorder, a Darth Vader luggage set, a bag of silver and foreign coins, two houses, drill bits, a handheld saw and a toilet. That last one was sold at an auction in 2020 for $22.50. As required by law, the state got $2.25 — 10 percent of the toilet money.
In 2021, Spokane police seized a 65-inch Samsung TV valued at $727 and kept it for their own use.
"It's so we can watch football" McNab deadpans when asked about the TV by the Inlander.
McNab quickly clarifies he's joking. The TV is mounted on a wall near his office and used by the department for mission briefings and intelligence displays, he says.
You'll sometimes hear horror stories from other parts of the country about law enforcement seizing items and keeping them for personal use. McNab says that doesn't happen in Spokane, and that any property they opt to retain is exclusively used for law enforcement purposes.
"There's no motivation for us to do any of that; we're paid well," McNab says.
WILL THE POT RUN DRY?
Spokane Police Chief Craig Meidl and others in the department stress that they support youth anti-drug education as a concept; they just worry that the forfeiture fund doesn't have enough money to fund it. They claim that the statewide legislation and Blake v. Washington — a Washington Supreme Court decision that effectively decriminalized some types of minor drug possession — have reduced the amount of drug busts police do, which by extension is leading to less money entering the forfeiture account.
Beggs is skeptical. The Blake decision went into effect in February 2021. The department's argument doesn't make sense, Beggs says, because the department's forfeiture account has already taken in $261,749 this year. That's on track to be the second-highest year on record. Those numbers come from historical civil forfeiture data that was produced in response to a public records request from the Inlander and later presented to the City Council at an Aug. 29 public safety committee meeting.
"After a seizure of property, people in Washington have 45 days to claim it. After that, cases sometimes drag on for months, even years."
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Hendren says the numbers are high this year because there's a gap between when the property is seized and when it can be deposited into the account. After a seizure of property, people in Washington have 45 days to claim it. After that, cases sometimes drag on for months, even years, Hendren says.
A closer analysis of the numbers adds a bit of nuance to the argument. According to reports from the State Treasurer's Office, Spokane police saw $227,039 in gross proceeds for drug forfeitures in the first quarter of 2022. That means the money was deposited in the first quarter of 2022 — not seized. If you break it all down by the year it was seized, a little over half that sum came from seizures that occurred after the Blake decision. The rest came from cash and assets seized between 2016 and 2021.
Funding things with forfeiture money is difficult, Hendren says, because the amount of money coming into the account varies wildly each year.
Hendren says the current forfeiture numbers are still rough and that he can't comment on specifics, but as whole, he says they're trending downwards. It might take years before the full financial impact of the Blake decision to make its way to the forfeiture account, but it will happen, he says. Kelly, the Seattle University professor, notes that the legalization of marijuana did cause a minor reduction in the amount of forfeiture money departments brought in.
LEGISLATIVE INTENT
Washington state's forfeiture law says that property retained by police in drug enforcement activity has to be used "exclusively for the expansion and improvement of controlled substances related law enforcement activity."
Spokane police think that line specifically refers to law enforcement activity and argue that youth anti-drug education falls outside the requirements.
Beggs says he thinks that argument is a "complete red herring" and that drug education absolutely falls under the definition. He notes that police had indicated earlier in the year that they were OK with spending just $25,000 of drug forfeiture money on anti-drug education.
If Beggs' amendment passes, it's still unclear which community anti-drug groups the money would go toward. Beggs says the council would put out a request for proposals from community organizations that focus on lived experience and peer mentoring.
"This could make a huge difference out there," Beggs says. "And frankly, I think it's more effective than buying drugs and chasing drug dealers around."
The amendment will come to a vote on Sept. 19. ♦
