USU Police trying to find owners of unclaimed property
The Utah State University Police Department is trying to find the owners of bicycles and other unclaimed property left on campus.
The list of unclaimed property on USUPD’s Facebook page consists of more than 60 bikes, wallets, credit cards, driver’s licenses, knives, car keys, glasses, a passport, a cell phone and a birth certificate.
USU Police Captain Kent Harris said the police have taken to Facebook, The Herald Journal and the Utah Unclaimed Property Division’s website to get the word out.
Some of the items have identification, however, USU police are still having trouble contacting the owners.
“We’ve tried calling and emailing with no response,” Harris said. “We’ve gotten some responses, and those people are no longer on the list and have claimed their property.”
Names on the list are Emerie Jerry, Shawn Jones, Katelyn Cheney, Jake Johnson, Lindsay Thunell, Carina Terry, Aaron Hancock, Wyatt Dincel, Melanie Torgerson, Kenneth Lee and Cameron Wright. Owners should contact the USU Police Department to reclaim their property.
Harris said the police are pushing to find owners now because the department’s bicycle impound is full. Some of the bikes were impounded more than five months ago.
“After spring semester ended, we tagged bicycles that had been left,” he said. “We have several days to make sure those postings are there, and then we can dispose of the property.”
In this case, Harris said, disposing means putting the bikes up for sale at the USU surplus store if they are not claimed by Tuesday.
Harris added that many of the bikes were picked up from around on-campus housing.
“The bicycles are called in with people saying, ‘we have a bicycle issue at this location.’ We’ll go tag it and leave it for a few days to say this bicycle needs to be removed or it will be impounded,” he said.
If the tag is still on after a week, the police impound the bike.
Harris recommended that people put contact information on their property to make the returning process easier, and registering their bikes with the campus police.
“We’d like to make sure that people who have bikes on campus get them registered with us,” he said. “That way, if the bike is stolen and recovered, we know who to reach out to, or if they leave campus that we can contact them someway to have them come and claim their property.”
—karcinrose@gmail.com
@harriskarcin