Custodians await cut in bicycle clutter

Thanks to lobbying efforts by police evidence custodians across the state, they will be enjoying less cluttered storage rooms soon.

Gov. Bob Holden signed a bill into law Monday to require finders of property, such as police departments, to wait just six months for someone to claim it. Under current law, lost property has to be kept for an entire year before it can be auctioned, discarded or taken possession of by the finder. The shorter time span will take effect Aug. 28.

The Cape Girardeau Police Department is storing about 30 to 50 found bikes, but Debbie Enderle, evidence clerk, said she expects more soon with the warmer temperatures -- and storage will once again be a problem.

"They're so big and bulky, and they don't stack well," Enderle said Tuesday.

Police put the bikes in the department's garage first, but the bikes get in the way of other vehicles and tend to fall easily, she said. As they accumulate, they are put in a construction dumpster converted into storage space. Once that's filled, a metal storage shed is used.

In one sense, the new law makes more true the common saying: "Finders keepers, losers weepers." Some would argue that cutting the wait time in half may punish those seeking their lost property, but the bill's sponsor said that's not the case.

"If little Johnny and his dad in the new millennium have access to a telephone or the Internet, hopefully they will contact the evidence custodian about a lost bike," said state Sen. Jon Dolan, D-Lake Saint Louis. "But Johnny and his parents don't seem to look as hard as they used to."

One-year law

Missouri's one-year found property law was one of the lengthiest in the nation, according to the International Association for Property and Evidence, based in Burbank, Calif.

Joe Latta, the association's executive director, said waiting periods nationally average 90 days, though some states have 30-day waits. Others mimic Missouri's new law.

"Thirty days is probably too long," he said. "Ninety percent of the found property turned in never gets claimed. It's just a lot of junk. It just sits on the shelf for whatever the statutory time is in a particular state."

About every 18 months, Cape Girardeau auctions bikes and other found items along with various pieces of park and street equipment. The next auction likely will be in May 2004, said Tim Gramling, assistant public works director. The money is poured back into city funds.

Cell phones present another storage problem, Enderle said. Unless a phone's battery is charged and it has the numbers of relatives or friends stored in it, the owner likely won't be found. Cellular companies also won't release information about owners without a subpoena.

"We're not going to go through with a subpoena for a found phone," she said. "By the time we get the phone, the owner has usually replaced it anyway."

It's not easy to get items back to rightful owners, but Enderle said she puts in a concerted effort.

Jackson's solution

The city of Jackson also sees many unclaimed bikes, but last month's tornado affected storage, said Sgt. Scott Eakers. Police were storing bikes in a fenced area next to the station, but that can't be used until repairs are finished.

Currently, a single unclaimed bike sits outside the interim police station at the sheriff's department. Most of the found items pop up in the city park. Jackson repairs the bikes and donates them to needy children, Eakers said.

The problem begins when owners fail to protect their property, he said.

"Nobody writes down the serial numbers or puts any kind of identifying marks on them," he said.

Evidence custodian Mary Ann Palmer has watched the evidence warehouse at the O'Fallon Police Department in suburban St. Louis grow increasingly crowded since 1997. By last count, for example, there were 107 unclaimed bikes taking up storage space. Palmer, who lobbied for the new law, said she had practical reasons for doing so.

"We have an awful lot of found property, especially bikes, that take up a lot of our evidence storage space. That's just the way it is, we just don't have enough space," Palmer said. "If someone hasn't come looking for their bikes in six months, they've probably already had them replaced."

Staff writer Mike Wells contributed to this report.