Sharing the drug money.

• Author: Ervin, Mike
• Position: Activists demand share of forfeiture assets

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...