SELECTIVE ENFORCEMENT

"We don't pay taxes.  Only the little people pay taxes."

- - LEONA HELMSLEY - New York hotel owner and convicted tax cheat

Refusing to obey a law because you don't feel like it, because it costs you money, even because you think it is truly a bad law, generally will not carry much water with prosecutors.

Unless the law in question is Initiative B, the one that required law enforcement agencies to turn assets seized from criminals over to the Utah Uniform School Fund.  Then, the prosecuting attorneys in the state's largest counties have been revealed in a recent report as some of the most brazen scofflaws around.

Of course, the law the prosecutors refused to obey expires Monday, replaced by the Legislature's recent cave-in to years of a less-than-honorable form of civil disobedience by what we might now call selective enforcement agencies in Salt Lake, Davis, Utah and Weber counties.  State Auditor Auston Johnson reports that out of some $924,000 in seized assets in the last two years, those counties managed to hang onto more than $470,000.

The initiative that passed with nearly 60 percent of the vote in 2000 was a clear-eyed and highly principled statement of concern that allowing law enforcement agencies to benefit financially from taking things away from accused criminals corrupted the system in appearance if not in fact.

But police and prosecutors, understandably, never liked the law.  They complained that it allowed some of the nastiest characters around to benefit from ill-gotten gains while narcs lacked the money to pursue them.

Those arguments are false.

Taking stuff from criminals remained legal.  It was just that, because law enforcement agencies involved didn't get to keep the proceeds for themselves, they could no longer be bothered.

And even with that money, police and prosecutors will still be outgunned, outmanned and, most certainly, outspent by the bottomless pit of the drug business.

The new law does have the benefit of channeling the bad guys' money to a statewide fund, where it is to be parceled out to law enforcement agencies around the state based on need and accountability.  That does reduce the threat of police on high alert for flashy cars with California plates and broken turn signals because their office needs a new air conditioner.

The bottom line is that the people charged with enforcing this law didn't want to obey it, and they managed to ignore it until it went away.

How many other people could get away with that?