The St. Louis Police Department has moved into a new headquarters that was paid for with $2.7 million in criminal asset forfeiture funds, says the St. Louis Post-Dispatch. Its old headquarters, dating from the 1920s, would have cost at least $70 million to modernize.
The renovation cost $10.1 million, paid for with $7 million from a 2007 bond issue, a $3 million donation from the St. Louis Police Foundation, private contributions and criminal asset forfeiture funds. Most of the office furniture was donated by local businesses. “It cost more for us to live in the past than it did to invest in the future,” Police Chief Sam Dotson said during a ribbon cutting ceremony Saturday. “Asset forfeiture money means money we seized from criminal enterprises. So in this case, crime really did pay for the metropolitan police department.”