YELLOW SHEET Office of the State Auditor of Missouri |
February 28, 2002
Report No. 2002-18
As
required by state law we compiled the 2001 Criminal Activity Forfeiture Act
(CAFA) seizure reports submitted to the State Auditor's Office by prosecuting
attorneys and the Attorney General.�
This compilation was limited to the presentation of information
submitted.
The
State Auditor received 83 of the 116 (72%) CAFA seizure reports, required to be
submitted by January 31, 2002, from prosecuting attorneys and the Attorney General
for property seized in calendar year 2001.�
This compliance percentage is a significant increase from the prior year
when only 30 of the 116 (26%) required CAFA seizure reports were submitted
timely to the Department of Public Safety for property seized in calendar year
2000.
However,
after receiving information from jurisdictions across the state there is reason
for some concern.� Even though more
jurisdictions actually filed reports with the State Auditor's Office this year,
many failed to report how the forfeitures they were responsible for were
disposed of; resulting in less confidence as to their proper disposition.
As
a result, a comparison of this year's report filings to last year shows the
number of forfeitures decreased overall.�
While it appears a slight increase of the amount of forfeitures remitted
to the state occurred, it is difficult to conclude due to requested information
being withheld.
To
accomplish our objective we compiled all seizure information submitted to the
Director of the Missouri Department of Public Safety for calendar year 2000 so
a comparison would be available.
We
also mailed a letter to prosecuting attorneys and to the Attorney General,
dated December 28, 2001, notifying them of the deadline for the submission of the
CAFA seizure and forfeiture reports.�
This letter listed the information that should be included in their
report according to Section 513.607.8, RSMo. Supp. 2001, and that the report
should be submitted to both the State Auditor and to the Director of the
Missouri Department of Public Safety.�
The letter also indicated that if a prosecutor did not have any seizures
a report indicating no seizures needed to be submitted.
Due to the February 28, 2002 statutory deadline to submit this report, only seizure reports received by February 15, 2002 are included in the compilation.