Cocaine, Pot...the Lansing Police Department has confiscated it all. And the attempt to get drugs and dealers off the streets has seemed never-ending at times-- especially now.

"They're not experiencing the same recession as the rest of us. They still have money and the drugs are flowing," Captain Ray Hall of the Lansing Police Department explains.

Perhaps more so than in the past says Hall because people who usually wouldn't use-- are turning to drugs to cope with the economy.

"Sometimes the best thing you're going to do is keep the criminals running. We wish we could stamp out drugs," Mayor Virg Bernero says.

But what's bad for society pays for undercover drug funding.

The Lansing Police Annual Report says the money seized by the department has nearly doubled from 2007 to 2008-- to over one million dollars.

"When they have cash on them, we take the cash. And, so we have an uptick," Hall says.

The big question in all of this is what happens to the surplus in money LPD has accumulated. Hall says all of it goes right back in the police department.

"Personnel, certainly the equipment that's necessary to do some of the operations come from the money that we seize," Hall explains.

Mayor Virg Bernero says the numbers indicate that the system is working.

"I think the investment that we've made in law enforcement has paid off," Bernero says.

But he and Captain Hall agree they'd give up the money in an instant if it meant the streets would be drug free.

"Ideally I wouldn't want to get a single dollar out of the drug trade because there wouldn't be a drug trade and we know crime would plummet if that was the case," Hall says.