On Monday, the Crookston City Council approved a resolution declaring forfeited vehicles impounded by the Crookston Police Department as surplus, allowing them to be sold to raise funds for the department.
Crookston Police Lieutenant Darin Selzler said the cars will go up online for public auction in early June. “This go-around, we have 17 cars that were forfeited as a result of DWI forfeitures,” said Selzler. “We put them up on May 10 at the Council meeting; there was a resolution to declare these cars as surplus property. Then, we can move forward with putting the cars up for auction or selling them. Typically, how we do that is we well them through the State of Minnesota – www.minnbid.org – if you were to go online and look for those.”
Selzler said the state will handle the financial side of the sale, while the police department will have the cars available for inspection and handle the transfer of ownership. “In the upcoming days, we’ll take the cars out of storage, park them on the green space south of our impound building,” said Selzler. “We’ll do a public notice letting the public know we’re having a sale, where they can go to bid on the vehicles, where they can go look at them for inspection. That, per the state, is a 10-day period. And at the end of that 10-day period, whoever wins the bid on the vehicle can come and obtain the vehicles from us at the police department. The money is paid to the state, and then, the state back-funds the city.”
The money raised from the sale of the vehicles will go back into equipment and training. “Every one of these vehicles is a DWI or alcohol-related offense,” said Selzler. “How that works for the State of Minnesota is once you sell the vehicle, 70 percent of the money after expenses is returned to the police department and 30 percent to the prosecuting attorney’s agency. How statute is written on that, the money has to be used toward DWI or alcohol enforcement. So, items that you could use to help fund or purchase would be radars, body cameras, in-car cameras, training, and things like that. It’s kind of unique and nice that the money goes back into DWI enforcement.”
