Future of Police Auctions May Be on Internet
By Phillip Ramati, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.
Jun. 12–If a law enforcement agency elects to sell off items it has seized, it usually tries to arrange an auction to get the highest price possible.
In Middle Georgia, some agencies like the Macon Police Department run the auctions themselves, usually combining those seized items with other articles the city is trying to sell, such as excess furniture or equipment.
The advantage is that the city and the police don’t have to pay fees to an auction house. On the flip side, there are usually fewer people available to bid on items because the market is localized.
Sheriff Butch Reece of Jones County uses Denton Auctions to sell seized items, though he said his office hasn’t had a sale for a while.
The future of police auctions may lie with the company Bibb County Sheriff Jerry Modena uses, propertyroom.com.
The eBay-like Web site is devoted exclusively to auctioning items from police storage houses from nearly 700 agencies across 40 states.
According to Capt. David Davis of the Bibb County Sheriff’s Office, the county made more than $10,000 in 2005 in profits off sales from propertyroom.com.
“We can sell them at an auction that is open to all people across the U.S.,” Modena said.
“Before (at a county auction), it was only people in Georgia, and you may not get a premium price.”
Steve Lupinacci, CEO of propertyroom.com, said the site was started by Tom Lane, a former Long Beach, N.Y., detective who saw the needs of law enforcement agencies to clear out their warehouses. The company had its first auction in January 2001.
Other Georgia counties besides Bibb that sell their stuff at the site include Chatham, Cobb and Gwinnett.
Lupinacci declined to say how much the company earns in a year, but he said the company has 600,000 to 700,000 unique visitors a month and more than 450,000 registered users.
Items range from the expected — such as TVs and computers — to the very odd: fire hydrants, parking meters, a coffin gurney, even a colonoscope.
Lupinacci said, unlike regular online auction sites, his company is the only seller and handles all shipping and removal of merchandise from police warehouses.
“This was a niche nobody else was going after,” he said.
“It’s geared directly to the needs for police departments. … We’re happy to be pretty successful. We know the public appreciates being able to shop here.”
To contact Phillip Ramati, call 744-4334 or e-mail pramati@macontel.com [mailto:pramati@macontel.com].
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Copyright (c) 2006, The Macon Telegraph, Ga.
Distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Business News.
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