THUNDER BAY - Thunder Bay Police are turning to the World Wide Web in an effort to start liquidating thousands of seized items that continue to take up space at the Balmoral Street police headquarters.
Acting deputy chief, Don Lewis, informed the Thunder Bay Police Services Board on Tuesday that the Thunder Bay Police Service is trying the online auction site GovDeals to sell several seized items. If the website proves to be successful, it may replace physical auctions normally held at the Police Station.
“We normally have two auctions per year,” Lewis said. “Those can be difficult to organize and labour intensive, so this is basically using a similar format of other web-based auction sites like eBay.”
GovDeals is an online marketplace that allows government agencies to register and post items for liquidation, which people can then bid on. Thunder Bay Police Service pays GovDeals seven per cent of the final bidding price on all items.
Bidding is open to anyone around the world, but Lewis said the items must be picked up in person and the Police Service will not ship any items.
Police posted three items on the website – a miter saw, a bicycle, and a toolbox with assorted tools. As of Wednesday, the bike had 13 bids. The auction for the bike closes on Thursday.
“We will see how successful this is, which is yet to be determined,” Lewis said. “If we are able to get rid of these items and create some space for our already tight seized items location in our compound then we will keep going.”
Lewis said he did not have an exact number of how many seized items the Police Service has, but he estimates it to be in the thousands.
“We are trying to use this as generating some money from seized goods that we normally put through our auctions that we do twice a year and see if we can do that a little more web-based friendly and for those who do some shopping online they can access our property that we are going to get rid of anyway through that medium,” Lewis said.
If the online auctions prove to be successful, the Police Service may only hold one auction per year.
On Tuesday, the Thunder Bay Police Services Board also approved allocating $34,000 of seized money toward the purchase of a new unmarked police vehicle for the court section.
The money was seized in two separate incidents, $27,000 in one and $7,000 in another. Lewis said money that is abandoned or not associated with a crime or no one has made claim to can be used by the Police Services Board to purchase equipment under the Police Services Act.
“It is a relief on budgets, which of course is directly correlated to the taxpayer in the region,” Lewis said. “On the two fronts it relieves financial demands on our budget and can be used to provide much needed equipment for our members.”
