HOLYOKE — In the past four years, the Holyoke Police Department has seized nearly $1 million in cash from people, according to records obtained by the Gazette.
From the beginning of 2018 through the end of 2021, Holyoke police seized $982,227 that went into its “police evidence” bank account, according to a city bank statement the Gazette obtained through a public records request.
During that time, the department transferred $233,334 out of the account, some of it going to defendants after courts ordered their money returned and other transfers given to the district attorney’s office and federal law enforcement agencies.
Police in Massachusetts can take money and assets from people — and often keep and spend it — under a process known nationwide as “civil asset forfeiture.” The practice allows law enforcement to seize property from people, including those who haven’t been convicted of a crime, if they think that property is connected to illegal activity.
In Holyoke, that money sits in the Police Department’s evidence account until those assets are officially “forfeited” during court proceedings, after which the police department gets a cut of the money from prosecutors and the department gets to spend it at its discretion. From 2018 through 2021, the department received a total of $193,839 in forfeited money, which goes into two separate bank accounts — one for dollars from federal agencies and one for state funds.
“It takes forever — this is not an overnight thing,” department spokesman Capt. Matthew Moriarty said in a recent phone interview.
He said the case has to make its way through court, after which “all the agencies involved get a piece of that money.”
Guidance from the state Department of Local Services states that such “Law Enforcement Trust” accounts, as they are known, can be used for “protracted law enforcement investigations; additional technical equipment or expertise; matching funds for federal grants; or other law enforcement purpose.” No city council or Town Meeting action is required for a municipality to spend those funds.
Between 2018 to June 2022, the Holyoke Police Department spent $192,733 in federal seizure money and another $117,653 in state seizure money from its Law Enforcement Trust accounts, according to bank statements provided by City Auditor Tanya Wdowiak, who said that $10,606 remains in the state account and $224 in the federal account.
In Holyoke, the records show that police have spent that money in a variety of ways, including tasers, ammunition, desk chairs, body armor vests, sights and lights to mount on rifles, data protection services, attendance to the New England Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association yearly conference in Newport, R.I., glue sticks and more.
The lion’s share of forfeiture money, however, went to overtime pay. During that four-year period, city payroll records show that Holyoke spent $136,004 in state and federal forfeiture money paying officers overtime.
Moriarty said seizure money can be used when the department goes on a big sting — for example, to bust “johns” (people paying for sex) or conduct a narcotics raid after obtaining a search warrant.
“We could use money out of that account to pay for the overtime so it doesn’t affect the budget,” Moriarty said.
In Holyoke, the biggest beneficiary of that overtime spending has been current Police Chief David Pratt, who from 2011 through 2021 received $168,956 in overtime pay from the city’s federal and state forfeiture accounts — 41% of all the forfeiture money the city spent on overtime during that period. Of that money, Pratt made $68,215 from 2018 through 2021. Pratt became a captain in the department in 2011. He had been commander of operations, criminal investigations, budgets and grants, and led the Holyoke Public School’s school resource officer program before becoming chief last year. This year, the New England Narcotic Enforcement Officers Association awarded Pratt its Lifetime Achievement Award, according to an agenda from the organization’s conference.
In Massachusetts, it’s easier for police to seize money than anywhere else in the country. It is currently the only state where the legal bar that law enforcement agencies have to clear to support the seizure of property is “probable cause.” That’s a lower standard of proof than any other state, according to the public interest law firm Institute for Justice.
In some cases, police end up seizing money from people who face no criminal charges or allegations whatsoever.
The Gazette filed public records requests for Holyoke’s civil asset forfeiture accounts after breaking the news that the city agreed to return nearly $25,000 to a woman whose lawyer said she was the subject of an “illegal shakedown” at the hands of Holyoke police. According to court records, Holyoke officers allegedly threatened the woman, Natasha Custodio, with arrest if she didn’t give them $24,850 in bail money she had just received back from Hampden Superior Court.
Custodio had not been accused of a crime, nor did prosecutors file for civil asset forfeiture to seize the money, which was bail money for another person Custodio knew whose bail had just been revoked after he was charged with another crime. After Custodio sued the city in October 2021, the city immediately agreed to give the money back.
Custodio’s name does appear in a city ledger of people who received money back from the police department’s evidence account, where cash sits until it is either officially forfeited or returned to defendants. The Gazette filed public records requests requesting bank statements for the evidence account and two seized money accounts — one for federal and one for state funds.
Money taken from people is initially deposited in the city’s evidence account, where deposits over the four-year period analyzed by the Gazette range from as low as $1 to the highest deposit of $49,191. The median amount of money taken was $425.
The department’s evidence account was actually created in 2018. Before that, Moriarty said, the department simply kept cash and coins in an evidence locker inside the department.
“Having money in your police station is a liability,” Moriarty said, noting that it’s also a logistical headache. He said once, the police department took an incredible amount of coins from someone. “Literally, there were buckets of coins. These poor evidence guys, I don’t know how they did it but they counted every single penny.”
Eventually, that money makes its way through the court system and can be forfeited. Once it arrives in a police department’s seizure accounts, it can be spent more or less at the police chief’s discretion. Easthampton, for example, is using its federal drug forfeiture account to buy a Tesla electric vehicle. This year, city councilors in Boston conducted a hearing into their police department’s use of civil asset forfeiture proceeds to quietly buy a controversial piece of cell-phone surveillance technology known as a “stingray” — a purchase revealed by the news outlet WBUR.
Outside of overtime spending, the biggest expenditures of asset forfeiture in Holyoke included $19,369 to Marcotte Ford — which does a lot of business with the city including purchasing police cars and doing service repairs for city vehicles — for unspecified services, $14,000 to Conklin Furniture for desk chairs, $13,902 spent on tasers from the company Axon Enterprise in 2017, another $19,148 spent with that same company in 2019, and $10,594 sending officers to an annual New England Narcotic Officers Association conference.
Another purchase, for $3,900, appears to be for a SPARC AR red-dot rifle sight for an AR rifle. The department also appears to have spent $2,537 on a light that mounts on top of a rifle.
The department also spent $7,700 on what seems to have been training from the Israeli digital intelligence company Cellebrite, the same month, May 2018, that it spent $10,964 with the city’s computer consultants, Whalley Computer Associates, for data-protection services.
Some other purchases, however, only appear in the back account with a brief explanation or a partial product name, leaving them difficult to figure out. Holyoke police did not respond in recent days to multiple requests to provide more information about some of the purchases made with those accounts.
Speaking recently at City Hall, Wdowiak said that the Police Department is good about communicating with her office about the seizure accounts, which she monitors together with the police. Mayor Joshua Garcia said that as chief, Pratt has been good about working with him to address budgetary needs, and that he imagines the two will discuss how to spend forfeited money.
“I appreciate having someone in that department who is collaborative and transparent and trying to do the best with what they have under the circumstances,” Garcia said.
And forfeited money will likely continue to roll into the department’s coffers. In 2020, for example, police raided a high-end apartment at 452 Main St. in Holyoke — the home of Cory Taylor, who they alleged used it as a base of operations for an illegal pot operation. Inside, they found 24 illegal guns, eight cars and $4,049,000 in cash.
Dusty Christensen can be reached at dchristensen@gazettenet.com.