In October 2023, a crew from the Daviess County Sheriff’s office went looking for drugs at a house on a corner lot about a mile from the Ohio River.
They found more than a pound of suspected meth, bags of cocaine and fentanyl tucked under a child’s bed. The woman who lived at the house also had nearly $6,000 in her purse. The deputies took it all.
The next day they posted a photo of the bust on the sheriff’s Facebook page — the cash fanned across a table.
Months later, the sheriff should have reported the cash seizure to state officials, but that didn’t happen, according to state records. The sheriff did not respond to a request for comment.
A Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting review of state records shows 25% of law enforcement agencies failed to submit reports detailing what they took last fiscal year through a process known as asset forfeiture, a powerful and controversial practice that police praise and civil liberty advocates denounce.
Kentucky’s asset forfeiture law gives law enforcement agencies broad authority to take and keep cash and property if they suspect it’s tied to drug trafficking. Agencies are also required to report everything they take in the course of a fiscal year to the state’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet by mid-September. Each year, some don’t.
“Without reporting there’s no transparency, no accountability, no meaningful oversight,” said Lisa Knepper, senior director of strategic research at the Institute for Justice, a Virginia-based nonprofit law firm that specializes in civil liberty litigation.
Knepper said when transparency lacks it becomes impossible to determine if practices like asset forfeiture are actually working as promised — targeting criminals — or if it’s prone to abuse.
Last year’s totals
State data obtained by KyCIR show 167 state law enforcement agencies seized more than $7.5 million between July 1, 2023 and June 30, 2024.
In 2018, KyCIR found just 11% of agencies consistently filed the required reports. After that, compliance climbed to more than 80% for four straight years — the total haul topping $49 million.
In Kentucky, law enforcement keeps 85% of what they take. The rest goes to prosecutors.
Proponents say the practice helps dismantle drug trafficking operations while funneling needed revenue to law enforcement operations. Opponents say the potential for profit fuels corruption and abuse.
Prosecutors can use seized cash as leverage to coax people into plea deals, even when there’s little proof the cash is the fruits of drug dealing. KyCIR reviewed hundreds of court cases in 2018 involving seized cash and found one in four were closed without the defendant being convicted of drug dealing — yet still they lost their money.
In Kentucky, there are few penalties for the agencies that fail to report. Under state law, the attorney general must file a lawsuit to recover any seized funds from agencies that fail to report — but that’s never happened, according to a spokesperson for the state’s Justice and Public Safety Cabinet.
Law enforcement agencies are required to submit annual asset forfeiture reports to the state office no later than Sept. 15 each year.
KyCIR requested records Oct. 21. A week later, cabinet officials provided two spreadsheets — one for police departments, another for sheriffs — listing 375 agencies across the state. The records show 91 agencies failed to submit an asset forfeiture report for last fiscal year by the deadline, the most since at least 2018, according to state data.
“We continue to communicate to those agencies who need more time through the Kentucky Chiefs of Police Association and Kentucky Sheriffs Association,” said Morgan Hall, the cabinet’s spokesperson.
By late November, Hall said the cabinet had received reports from 13 additional agencies.
Confusion, not willful intent, is the culprit for the failure to comply with state law, said Shawn Butler, the executive director of the Kentucky Association of Chiefs of Police.
“I believe there is still confusion over the required report even when you have not seized anything,” he said. “Many agencies do not seize anything.”
State Office of Drug Control Policy officials request agencies file reports even if they don’t seize any cash, cars, guns or other property. This year, 87 agencies reported making no seizures.
Since judges issue the final order to forfeit seized property, Butler said it might work better to keep reporting within the court system.
A problematic incentive
The Kentucky State Police topped the list, reporting nearly $1.4 million in seized cash, according to the state data — the most the agency has reported since 2013. Jeffersontown Police took more than $670,000, and the Jefferson County Sheriff, an agency that’s taken millions from UPS packages through the years, reported seizing $663,000.
Louisville Metro Police seized about $571,000, more than last year but a sharp drop compared with totals from 2013 to 2022 when the agency reported seizing between $1.4 million and $7.7 million annually.
The other 163 agencies that reported taking cash last year seized an average of $26,000 each — ranging from the Northern Kentucky Drug Strike Force’s $525,000 to Vine Grove Police’s $1.
Agencies use seized cash to buy equipment, pay utility bills and fuel a network of confidential informants, KyCIR found in a 2019 report.
The potential for profit presents a problematic incentive for law enforcement to seize property, said Knepper, with the Institute for Justice.
“It can distort law enforcement priorities and make it so that police and prosecutors are more interested in pursuing property than criminals,” she said.
According to state law, any money “found in close proximity” to drugs or drug paraphernalia “are presumed to be forfeitable.” To prove otherwise a person must have “clear and convincing evidence,” according to the law.
Kentucky’s asset forfeiture laws are among the worst in the country, Knepper said, because it’s easy for law enforcement to take property but hard for people to get it back.
