TOPEKA, Kan. – Sometime after a January 2017 drug bust near Interstate 70's main exit for President Dwight Eisenhower's boyhood Kansas home, $72,000 in cash seized by the local sheriff's department disappeared.
The state has been investigating the Dickinson County Sheriff's Department for close to four years, with two officials saying in a court filing this year that a “fear of retribution” among department employees had slowed progress.
A three-term sheriff lost last year's Republican primary decisively to a former longtime officer who told voters the department was falling apart.
The mystery has unfolded amid a national debate over whether law enforcement agencies can too easily seize cash and other assets — often without a criminal