Best practices, best officers

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6 Comments

  1. Plurimus

     /  August 22, 2016

    While training is critical regardless of what else is done, by the time things have escalated to police involvement the potential for tragedy is greatly increased.

  2. Nancy, what was the answer on seized assets? In NC, those are constitutionally supposed to go to school funding. The NCGA has an open case they lost against them 20 years ago and have yet to provide the funding required for civil fines. Did the law enforcement panel acknowledge that their responsibility is to provide funds from forfeitures to public schools? I know they have ways to work around this through the feds, but that’s blatantly counter to the intent of the NC Constitution.

  3. Nancy

     /  August 24, 2016

    James, no one on the panel mentioned the seized assets going to fund schools. The discussion was about the risk of relying on seized assets as operating funds. Some districts have more seized assets than others, and the consensus was that the Legislature should adequately fund law enforcement agencies to operate without having to find extra funds through seized assets or things like speeding tickets, which is what added to the tensions between police and the community in Ferguson, MO.

    Do you know how much the schools get from seized assets? Is that amount broken out statewide or by district? That might be a clue as to whether all of the seized assets are going to the school system, and whether the Legislature is reducing its contribution to the schools by an equal amount.

  4. Nancy

     /  August 24, 2016

    Plurimus, so is the potential for averting tragedy. Sometimes police come into a volatile situation, especially domestic situations and those with a mental illness component, and can de-escalate the tensions.

  5. Plurimus

     /  August 25, 2016

    Nancy, agreed. My comment was aimed at the dismal state of mental health services and the fact that problems society should be dealing with elsewhere are dumped on the police, often with bad outcomes. The expectations some place on our police are unrealistic.

    Mr.. Barrett’s question piqued my interest, so I looked into it a bit. Turns out asset forfeiture is not cut & dried. Here is how I think it works…

    To answer your main question; The NC constitution article 9, section 7 (b) says: “The General Assembly may place in a State fund the clear proceeds of all civil penalties, forfeitures, and fines which are collected by State agencies and which belong to the public schools pursuant to subsection (a) of this section. Moneys in such State fund shall be faithfully appropriated by the General Assembly, on a per pupil basis, to the counties, to be used exclusively for maintaining free public schools. (2003 423, s.1.)”. Also, GS90-112 says “…..fines and forfeitures to be used for the school fund of the county in the county”.

    Reading that it seems to me that fines and assets collected from criminal activities go to a fund to be uses by the county where the crime was committed. GS90-112 deals directly with controlled substances, so it is not abundantly clear how assets from other crimes are distributed. Further, with regard to controlled substances and depending on the asset type the LE agency gets to use it to combat crime, then when the LE agency is done with it the proceeds go to the schools. see § 90-112 (d) and § 90-112 (d1) when it comes to cash it looks like it goes directly to the school fund. Also see § 90-112.1 (c). Civil forfeiture still is in place at the federal level and if the LE officers are “on loan” working with the Feds and temporarily reporting through the federal agency then the federal forfeiture rules apply. I think this relationship is covered by § 90-95.2.

    If the crime is under the federal jurisdiction, then the Federal rules apply and civil forfeiture (preponderance of evidence) can be used. I think the Feds rules allow the assets to be split between jurisdictions and the NC constitution 9 section 7 is superseded by federal laws.

  6. Nancy

     /  August 28, 2016

    Thank you for that research!