A backlog of stolen goods is building up at Oxford's main police station as officers recover more property each year.
Fred JonesProperty crime is on the increase, and with detectives success in catching burglars, shoplifters and other thieves, 15-18 per cent more items are arriving at the property office, in St Aldates Police Station, year on year.
Stretched as far as the eye can see, aisle after aisle of stolen goods are stacked, each TV, video, computer, toy, video and CD, carefully tagged, packaged and filed for future use as exhibits in court.
It has all been seized from shoplifters, thieves or burglars during raids, arrests and chases and is now officially known as 'crime property'.
It is carefully tagged and logged by Fred Jones, a civilian police worker who supervises a team of five staff.
Not only do the 10,000 annual crime property items need to be labelled and stored, so that they can instantly be located by the officer in a case at any moment, but when the goods are no longer required, Mr Jones is in charge of their disposal, which may be after a matter of days or years.
He decides whether to destroy it, sell it, return it or donate it to funds. Last year, this raised around £4,000 for children's charities.
Currently, most goods are sent to an auction house in Buckinghamshire and the proceeds are then referred back to Thames Valley Police, where they are distributed to charity.
From September, the goods will also feature on the Internet to make them more accessible to the public.
Unsellable items such as old wallets, used clothes and broken goods are thrown away, and drugs are taken away for destruction.
Where possible, stolen goods are returned to their rightful owners, and documents such as birth certificates, driving licences and bank cards to the office that issued them.
Mr Jones said: "We do go to great lengths to trace the owners.
"We were recently handed two candelabras which looked like they came from a church. I wrote to every church in the area and didn't receive one reply.
"Needless to say we never found the owners, so had to auction them off. They were worth considerable sums".
The property unit also runs the lost and found department.
Mr Jones added: "People would be amazed how much stuff is actually handed in here.
"Often, things aren't reported as missing because they don't think people ever hand anything in. We need to have more faith in mankind, because we are always left with a lot of unclaimed things.
"We once had a man's handbag with £3,500 brought in by a couple of female students.
"The owner, a tourist, had left it in the back of the taxi, so he was very pleased and gave them a hefty reward,"
Last year in Oxford alone 2,000 items were brought in to the lost and found department.
Of these 65 per cent were returned to their rightful owner, while eight per cent were claimed by the finder. The remainder were disposed of, in a similar way to crime property.
More than 1,000 stolen bikes are retrieved by Thames Valley Police every year and kept at St Aldate's Police Station waiting to be claimed by their owners.
Only 25 per cent are reunited with their owners, mainly because few are reported stolen or because owners can't remember their bicycle details. Thousands of pounds are made every year from the sale of unclaimed bikes which is then given to charity. These bikes will also soon be advertised on the police Internet auction site.
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