The NYPD admitted Thursday it has no idea how much money or how many vehicles it has seized — claiming any attempt to calculate the total would “lead to system crashes.”
The revelation came at the City Council’s Committee for Public Safety hearing, in which legislation was offered up that would ultimately require cops to report how much property and cash the department obtains on an annual basis.
Police officials went on to say that the only way to get a true total of what had been seized would be to “manually” count more than half a million invoices each year — a task they claimed was inconceivable.
“The type of searches envisioned in the bill will lead to system crashes and significant delays during the intake-and-release process,” explained Assistant Deputy Commissioner Robert Messner, after council chair Vanessa Gibson bombarded him with questions about the NYPD’s civil-forfeiture program.
Under New York’s forfeiture laws, cash and other property can be legally seized before a crime is ever proven or even formally charged. When people want to recover their property, whether they were exonerated or never linked to the crime, they must go through a drawn-out process that many deem not worth their time. Any forfeited currency that is not claimed is deposited into the city’s general fund. Vehicles that are seized are auctioned off, with the money also going to the general treasury, officials said.
Councilman Ritchie Torres, a Bronx Democrat, introduced the bill that would require the NYPD to report what it seizes each year. As of right now, officials claim the only items cops can keep track of are off-road vehicles, such as ATVs and dirt bikes.
“PETS [the Property and Evidence Tracking System] does not have the capability to provide the type of aggregate data sought, nor are all of the types of property requested by the bill captured in PETS,” Messner said, adding that off-road vehicles are being seized through targeted efforts to crack down on illegal ATV use, which allows cops to keep track of numbers.
“PETS was designed to catalog property at intake and ensure the accurate tracking of property through its final disposition.”
When asked by Manhattan Councilman Dan Garodnick if the NYPD knew how much seized money was in its possession, officials admitted that they didn’t have a clue.
“We would have to manually count every voucher,” they said.
Additional reporting by Kevin Fasickand Gabrielle Fonrouge