Maine police departments utilizing online auctions for unclaimed items
Assistant City Editor / OnlinePORTLAND -- Beneath the Portland Police Department, in a locked cage in the back of a locked evidence room, a set of rare swords sit in their sheaths and scabbards.
They're surrounded by bicycles, televisions, iPods, jewelry, clothes, the occasional Greek-goddess lawn statue and other found or confiscated property.
For at least six months, police will try to find and contact the owners of such items, and advertise them in the newspaper. If no one claims them, they may be auctioned on PropertyRoom.com.
Nine law enforcement agencies in Maine, including the Portland Police Department, use PropertyRoom.com, an eBay-like auction website for police-department goodies.
Property Room contracts with more than 2,500 police departments nationwide, and has more than 1.5 million registered bidders. That allows small and mid-size departments like Portland, South Portland and Westbrook to reach a larger number of potential buyers, without committing manpower and money to run their own auctions.
City auction goes online
LAS CRUCES — The city's annual auction of cars seized from drunken driving cases and old office equipment, bicycles and furniture has moved to cyberspace.
Instead of a once-a-year, on-site event at the auction yard off Hadley Avenue, where people with cash-on-hand from across the region would gather for hours looking for bargains, anyone can now place bids online, anytime and anywhere.
"We're trying to reach out to a broader base of bidders," said D. Eric Martin, the facilities management administrator for the city of Las Cruces.
"What we're trying to do with the online approach is to allow novice buyers to be able to bid."
Martin said the city turned a $7,000 profit during an experimental three-week online auction last fall, when the city sold two vehicles, a motorcycle and a mix of other
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