Police and federal agencies have diverted millions of dollars from Missouri schoolchildren. Under state law, money seized in drug cases is supposed to go to public school districts, but some police departments have found a simple way to keep the money for their own use. The agency keeps a cut and returns the rest of the money to police.
Police say some of that windfall is used to fight the war on drugs.
But such transfers to federal agencies hurt taxpayers, who must pay more for schools. And they clearly violate state law. If the public knew this in a large scale, they would not like it. Federal officials and some local police say that the seizures of money are proper and that they've done nothing wrong. Other law enforcement officials say they believe the law is not clear about every situation that police confront.