Real steals at online police auction

If you buy something from online auctioneer Property Room, you don't have to wonder if it was stolen.

That's because it probably was.

Property Room, started by a former police detective, gets its items from law enforcement property rooms nationwide. Most of its inventory of jewelry, bicycles, computers, furniture, tools, car stereos, cameras, sports equipment, portable music players and things that could best be categorized under miscellaneous -- or bizarre -- was seized from crooks.

Some of these items are well worn, others so pristine they're still in shrink wrap.

And now they can be yours.

"Two things I've learned in this business," said Harry Brockman, a vice president of Property Room Inc., standing in a company warehouse full of thousands of items.

"One: People will steal anything. Two: People will buy anything."

Old-fashioned police auctions once were held in parking lots and other civic locales. Now they're often done online.

"We used to have auctions downtown and in Van Nuys," said Steven Johnson, commanding officer of the Los Angeles Police Department's Property Division, "and as few as 15, 20 people might show up.

"If you're online, you open up to the nation."

Property Room (www .propertyroom.com), which went online in 2001 with a smattering of items from the Police Department in Eureka, Calif., and a few other places, has grown to the point where it has deals with more than 1,200 agencies, including the Los Angeles, Burbank and Pasadena police departments.

Think of the site as your personal, legal fence.

Time to play perp. Let's see what's available.

Property Room has four warehouses across the country -- including its original location in the City of Industry -- to hold things that are on the site or being readied for auction.

Even before entering the local warehouse for a tour, it was clear that bicycles were one of the main items being offered.

In the parking lot, John Karstom was loading seven bikes into the back seat of his 1997 Buick LeSabre. Three more went on a rack at the rear of the car. (If you live near a warehouse, you can pick up things.)

He won the entire lot with a bid of $10, and from the look of the bikes -- dirty, missing parts, sometimes rusted -- he may have overpaid. But Karstom, who estimates that he has 100 bikes in various states of repair at home in Irvine, says he can get some of them back on the road.