What do the police do with seized items?

Question

What do police do when they are investigating a crime and they take items for evidence? After the trial is over, do they just keep it, or what?

Answer 1

Some items are returned to the rightful owner(victim or family of victim),some are auctioned off(usually property belonging to the perpetrator),some is destroyed or thrown out.

Answer 2

Auction them off or sell them,after an amount of time. Only after all court matters like evidence etc. are settled and fee's paid, leans at banks & such are claimed. If the judge orders an item returned to someone perhaps family or victim, those items are not. The money goes into a general fund for the City or County which ever has made the arrest. It can be anything like, vehicles, boats, ATV's, homes, property, firearms both hunting or weapon, Cash, stocks, bonds, whatever was related in the arrest.

Answer 3

Some items (i.e. drugs) are destroyed after the trial. Others may be returned to their owners. Still other could be auctioned off if the owner is not known or not able to reclaim them. A lot of it depends on the judge's orders at the end of the trial.

Answer 4

As far as I can tell,they have auctions here about once in a year,and sell the stuff.Our police dept.here recently had a car sale.I wonder how much they made.Once I went to city hall for something and I saw a tall cage of bicycles that the police had and I wondered what kids cried at night because their bikes were gone.We use to have a drug seized police car here.They fixed it up and it was used to help the program "DARE".Dare to keep kids off drugs.My nephew was a police officer here and he drove it most the time.

Answer 5

If it is not contraban, then they can hold it for 30 to 60 days after the case if closed for the owner to get the property back. If it is not claimed then they can dispose of it according to their state guidelines. In Florida we have to either destroy it, put it to the departments use,Donate it to a charitable originzation or if we sell it the money has to be placed into an interest bearing account for 1 year, then the money has to be turned over to the State School Fund.

Answer 6

weapons and drugs are supposed to be destroyed except some drugs are held to given to informants cars houses etc are auctioned and government gets money does some get taken i'm sure how much probably not much varies from place to place
Sometimes the cops use cars seized from convicted drug dealers as unmarked cars for police work Some items are returned to the rightful owner(victim or family of victim

Answer 7

The best thing for Police Depts. to do is to auction the items the money will go to the city or county and will likely go to the Police Depts again

Answer 8

If it is evidence in a felony it is could be kept, auctioned off, or returned to an owner not directly involved in the crime... depending on what the evidence was and what it's relationship to the crime was... Basically.. it just depends.

Answer 9

After the case is over, depending upon what the evidence is, it can be returned to the owner or auctioned.

Answer 10

If it rather is evidence in an learn then no, you do not sign something. think of approximately it, in case you had incriminating evidence saved and the police got here to take it away they does not with politeness ask for a signature to permit you be attentive to they have it... telephone your interior sight police station (if that's the place it rather is being held) and enquire approximately it.