In New York, the multi-step process required to get the NYPD to release possessions can be opaque and circuitous. When the Bronx Defenders circulated a questionnaire in 2014 among its clients who had possessions taken from them at the time of arrest, nearly half said they were never even given the itemized voucher that Clavasquin received.
Even with that voucher in hand, petitioning the district attorney’s office for the necessary forms to release items categorized as evidence can be fruitless: More often than not, requests to the district attorney’s office—whether phoned in, written, or emailed—go unanswered, said Adam Shoop, a Bronx Defenders attorney who helped bring the class-action lawsuit against the city. The only reliable way to force a response is to file an administrative appeal, a legal tool that the average non-lawyer almost certainly wouldn’t be able to use on his or her own, Shoop said.
If someone is able to jump through all the hoops and obtain a district attorney’s release, there’s one final hurdle: The NYPD property clerk, which actually holds on to the items, requires two forms of ID before releasing any property. Drumming up two forms of ID can be difficult on its own, but it’s made harder still if the person’s wallet, which may contain a driver’s license, is in police custody. (The property clerk won’t count a seized license as a valid form of ID.) When that’s the case, the person has to notarize an authorization for someone else to pick up the items on their behalf.
Of the items that might be seized during an arrest, cars, cellphones, and wallets with cash are among the most valuable. Cellphones are especially likely to be categorized as arrest evidence, throwing up additional hurdles to recovery. (Shoop says that people arrested on drug-related charges are most likely to get their phones categorized as evidence.)
If a phone is taken and is hard to get back, not only does its owner have to keep paying for service—or pay an early termination fee, if it’s under contract—but he or she loses a basic tool of modern life. Younger, lower-income, non-white, and uneducated people are particularly likely to depend on their smartphones as their only way of accessing the internet, and some lower-income families may only have one smartphone.
