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Drug-forfeiture funds used to buy Canfield police gear
By Robert Connelly
CANFIELD
The Canfield Police Department has been using drug-forfeiture money to make capital investments, reducing what they seek from the city to fund new vehicles and equipment.
Chief Chuck Colucci said the department has had an officer with the Drug Enforcement Agency Task Force since the mid-1990s. According to the 2013 and 2014 city budgets, the expenditures for the DEA Forfeiture Fund went from $1,098 in 2010, when there was no officer with the task force, to a budgeted $40,000 for 2014. Most of those funds go toward equipment and salaries.
“We get money from local drug forfeitures, and we have an officer assigned to the DEA and we get some of the federal forfeiture money,” the chief explained.
But Colucci noted that new rules have shaped how forfeiture funds are allocated, reducing the totals for individual departments.
“In the past, it didn’t always get divided by every agency that works with the DEA,” Colucci said. Now it does.
One of Canfield’s recent investments is the TruNarc, purchased last year. TruNarc is a hand-held device powered by batteries that can scan a suspected drug and identify it by breaking down its molecular structure. Assistant Chief Scott Weamer compared the readings of the spectrometer to matching up fingerprints.
After about a minute or two, a red screen appears with what the identified narcotic is, or a green screen identifying the subject as something harmless, such as Tylenol or Advil.
Another benefit of the scanner is that it can read the suspected narcotic through a bag or container, eliminating possible contamination issues.
He said the department met with community leaders and decided on buying the device, which Colucci said cost about $8,000 and averages 20 to 30 scans a month by officers.
“If it wasn’t for the forfeited drug money, we wouldn’t have [TruNarc],” Colucci said.
Every scan is printed out, with characteristics of the pill or narcotic scanned. Weamer said.
“No court has recognized this as good enough alone,” he said — meaning the department still has to send every suspected narcotic off to be tested at the lab for trial.
Colucci said lab results usually are back within a month, but the return rate is faster if it’s a high-priority case.
Austintown Chief Robert Gavalier said the department looked at similar technology a few years ago but decided not to pursue it. He said it has not used Canfield’s TruNarc. “We’ve got small kits here that identify marijuana, cocaine. Nothing sophisticated like that. It’s still got to go to the lab anyway to verify exactly what it is,” Gavalier said.
Other purchases that the police department has made with drug-forfeiture funds have included marked and unmarked vehicles and laptops for the cruisers.
“At one point, all of our cruisers were funded through the federal forfeiture funds,” Colucci said. He said the funds had decreased enough by 2011 that the city began funding cruiser purchases. All cruiser laptops are paid for by either forfeiture money or grants through the state.
All six of the unmarked police cars have been acquired through the forfeiture program, either by using money from it or by using vehicles forfeited to the city through drug cases.