Officials want to buy guns and gear with the disputed money.

BRADENTON -- Drug dealers could soon buy the police a fingerprint scanner, a high-tech surveillance camera and 15 assault rifles.

Police officials here want to use disputed cash to buy about $45,000 worth of equipment that will be paid for by a controversial program that takes money from reputed dope pushers and puts it in department coffers.

Each year, hundreds of people waive their right to cash and property by signing Contraband Forfeiture Agreements, a document that essentially cancels a person's right to contest a seizure in court.

The documents, reviewed and amended by city lawyers last year after a series of stories by the Herald-Tribune, have been sharply criticized by legal scholars and attorneys, who questioned the legality of agreements. Police Chief Michael Radzilowski and other officials, however, defended the program as a way to put drug money to good use, and plan to ask the Bradenton City Council to approve the latest expenditures at Wednesday's meeting. City officials in 2006 routinely approved similar requests, as police used the money for everything from weapons and radar guns to attorneys' fees and a summer camp run by Councilman James Golden.

While city leaders back the program, it is the subject of a legal fight that will move forward next week in court. The case is rooted in a complaint by a Bradenton man, which says the agreement goes against state law.

Attorneys for Delane Johnson, who signed away $10,000 to the police, say the agreements are unconstitutional and violate the Florida Contraband Forfeiture Act, which requires police agencies to use the court system to seize money from suspected drug dealers. Johnson was not arrested, nor were several others who turned over cash and property to Bradenton detectives. But because they signed agreements, they essentially nixed their right to contest the seizure -- a dangerous precedent, to some legal experts.

"Imagine having to choose between signing over your cash or going to jail," Tampa Bay defense attorney Denis DeVlaming said earlier this year. "That's the situation that these people face. It's a scary proposition."

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