County Goes Online To Sell Old Evidence

DICKSON, Tenn. -- Burglary victims in Dickson County may find their stolen property in an unlikely place soon.

Video: Dickson County Sheriff Auctions Go Hi-Tech

The Dickson County Sheriff’s Department is going online to get rid of hundreds of items that are clogging up its property room, which is used to hold items seized and used as evidence in crime investigations.

The department has put the items up for auction on the Web site Propertyroom.com. The Web site is used by sheriff’s departments across the country to auction off the items. The items left are everything from vacuum cleaners that were seized in a burglary to cars and computers.

Dickson County Detective John Patterson hopes the property is worth something to somebody.

“I've seen items in here from 1988,” he said.

Every sheriff's department in the country has a property room. The rooms exist because eventually, the courts will clear the cases the evidence was used for, then the sheriff's departments either have to make room for the stuff or get rid of it.

Dickson County joined the online auction to get the items in front of the eyes of as many potential buyers as possible.

The site works like eBay: the items sold on the site go to the highest bidder, and 50 percent of the sales of Dickson County items goes back to the county.

“Which is 100 percent more than we were getting before,” Patterson said.

The auction won't accept items like guns, drug paraphernalia and sexually explicit material. Channel 4’s Chris Tatum reported that if someone spots something on the site that was stolen from them, the site will help get the item back to its rightful owner.

Dickson and Bradley counties are the only Tennessee counties to sign up so far.

Link: Propertyroom.com