On August 1st, 2012, my wife Casey and I picked up the property illegally seized by the Norwalk Police Department on February 16th, 2011. All was fine, until they got around to returning the Winchester Model 250, the Marlin Model 80, and the Mossberg Model 500. The two rifles had each been illegally seized in their cases, both of which were distinctive and easily identifiable, and each case contained not only the respective rifle, but the original owner’s manual for that rifle. These manuals are long since out of print and irreplaceable. Whoever was running the property room saw fit to remove both old rifles from their cases. Most interestingly, somewhere along the line, the case for each rifle, with the aforementioned manual…disappeared! The Mossberg, not in a case, had sat beside our bed, and had never been fired, and had been regularly cleaned and gently handled. Not so, in the NPD property room; it had long, heavy scrapes and scratches about the muzzle, clearly beaten up badly enough that the front sight post may well be damaged.
The above leads to a number of questions which we believe require answers.
- WHY were the rifles removed from their cases in the first place?
- HOW then could two easily identifiable rifle cases, each with other identifiable property in it, disappear?
- WHY was the brand-new Mossberg so carelessly handled such that the barrel became damaged?
In consideration of the first two questions, there was no reason to remove the rifles from their cases. The cases then disappeared. The case for the Winchester is dark-tan-colored hard plastic, with non-square short edges, such that the case could not easily stand on-end, and contained an original manual for a Winchester Model 250. This case could not simply have been "mistakenly" given to someone else picking up their property from the property room. The case for the Marlin was of brown leather and green canvas material, with a name tag affixed to it, and contained an original owner's manual for a Marlin Model 80. Here again, this case could not have been "mistakenly" given to someone else, by virtue of the fact that one must present ID in order to claim one's property from the property room! It is highly doubtful that this was an honest mistake. From all of this, it seems pretty reasonable to draw the conclusion that the cases were deliberately given to someone else, very likely a cop or two in need of cases for their own rifles. We believe that the Norwalk Police Department property attendant either never expected to have to return the illegally seized property, or feared no consequences at all for giving our property to another cop who came to him asking for a case. If this conclusion is incorrect, and the Norwalk Police Department Property Room really did manage to give our property to some other claimant, then it becomes a matter of the Norwalk Police Department having lost control of its' evidence room. Incompentence? Carelessness? Outright dishonesty? One way or another, we are going to get to the bottom of it.