Found property up for auction starting Friday

MOSES LAKE - So a bicycle turns up that doesn't belong to anyone in the neighborhood, and it gets turned in to the Moses Lake Police Department. Or maybe an iPhone turns up on a bench in McCosh Park, and gets taken to the PD.

And sometimes nobody shows up to claim the bike or the phone, or the ring or whatever the property might be.

So. Are unclaimed bikes lining the halls at the police department? Is the place awash in unclaimed cellphones?

Nah. There's a process for disposing of unclaimed property, and the latest contents of the property room will go up for sale in an online auction site Friday at www.propertyroom.com.

The city uses an online auction site called Property Room to sell some of the property, said Olivia Martinez, whose job includes overseeing the evidence and property room. Whether it's evidence in a case or something that got turned into the lost and found, the police department has to keep it for 60 days, Martinez said,

Summer is bike season; "we really have a lot of bikes," she said. About 15 bikes will be offered for auction, she said.

The department gets cell phones, MP3 players, "we even have a tablet right now." There's a coin collection, and two empty but open safes, she said.

"We don't really get too many valuables." All the eligible property goes to the auctioneer later this week, Martinez said.

People who think their bike or phone or other property might have ended up at the PD can contact Martinez and provide a description, she said.

There are different classes of property, depending on the way it got to the PD. "We have our evidence and we have our property," Martinez said.

Items collected in the investigation of a crime can be needed in court, so "we keep evidence as long as the case goes," she said. When the case ends, those items can be returned to the owner, she said.

In the case of evidence, Martinez sends notification by mail, and "I also give them a call, just to make sure." But if the owner doesn't claim them, they too will go for auction.

People who find property can claim it, subject to proceedings. There's a ring in the evidence room now. "A big ring," Martinez said. The person who found it has filed a claim for it, if the owner doesn't turn up in the meantime.

There are ways people can make it easier to reclaim their property. "It's nice if people write down their serial numbers," Martinez said, and they should take pictures of their valuables also. Bike owners can bring the bike to the police station, where the serial number is recorded and a sticker attached. "The sticker is really hard to get off," she said.

The Property Room auction will have Moses Lake items mixed in with stuff from all over the country. Along with the winning bid, buyers must pay shipping from the Property Room warehouse.