KANSAS CITY, Mo. – There’s a treasure trove of items buried in evidence kept in police department property rooms.
Once the court life ends for the evidence, it takes another journey, whose end should be returning to its rightful owner.
When that cannot be done, most of it is destroyed. But some gets a second life, sold to consumers through a live-auction Web site called
PropertyRoom.com.
The site was started by retired New York detective Tom Lane.
Lane says his mission was to help law enforcement agencies solve the problem of what to do with recovered goods.
Today, his company works with over 1,800 law enforcement agencies across the country, including 18 Missouri police departments. Kansas City, Missouri’s police department signed on about a year ago.
The Variety is Endless
A quick look at the site shows
diamond rings,
electronics,
cars,
tools,
clothes and even money (
coins) for sale at prices them seem pretty good.
Most of it looked shiny and new with descriptions that do a good job selling the item, but give no history of how it got to auction.
When we toured Kansas City, Missouri’s property room, we found a place stacked floor-to-ceiling with bags stuffed with evidence. More items are piled against walls and on the floor. It’s really a warehouse.
“Each bag has its own unique story,” says Sgt. Peter Schilling, who showed us around the property warehouse.
“We get five-thousand new pieces of evidence monthly and I already have 275,000 stacked up in here.
“I think the oldest items that we have date back to 1974,” he says, “Most of those are homicide trials or unsolved homicides.”
There are no firearms, drugs or jewelry kept there. Schilling says those items are kept in another, more secure and undisclosed place.
Abandoned property also ends up there. Dumped appliances and other items go first to the police department, where they sit for at least 40 days, waiting to be claimed or reported stolen.
Once adjudicated, everything of value gets picked up by
PropertyRoom.com.
