Maybe a element of that but doesn't seem central.
Wonder what is.
Money. As you most likely already know. A guy in the CID
explained the details of it to me years ago.
(The CID is the Army's equivalent of the F.B.I and the C.I.A.
rolled into one agency, by the way.)
The way it works is the law enforcement agency gets to keep
any valuables, including money, cars, and houses, that it seizes
in the course of its drug investigations -- so long as it can tie the
valuables to drugs in one way or another.
The standards are loose enough that it's pretty easy to do. Well,
over time the more or less inevitable has happened and agencies
have become reliant on seizures to maintain themselves
'in the lifestyle they are accustomed to', so to speak.
He was proud of the fact the CID was at the time about
the only Federal agency that absolutely refused to indulge
in the practice, but just about every law enforcement agency
or department in the country, great or small, has benefited
from drug money to at least some extent, and so many of
them rely on it.
Might have something to do with how even legalizing
weed is still loudly and predictably opposed by the cops
in nearly every community where it's being debated.
By the way, I was helping my CID friend paint his house one
afternoon when he got a phone call.
Interpol.
He'd been named their 'Cop of the Year', as they called it.