For the last thirty-two years our city has what we call court days. In the 1800's to the early part of this century most towns in Kentucky did not have a local circuit Court Judge. A traveling Circuit Judge made his way to smaller towns to preside over trials and civil matters that were above the old police court and mayor's court level. This would bring in people from all over the area for different reasons. Some would come to town for a scheduled trial as others would come just to watch and to visit friends. In a way it was a form of entertainment. Over a period of time our visitors started to bring in their excess crops, gun, knives and even dogs to sell on the streets during "court day". After the Judicial system changed in Kentucky and more Circuit Judges were made available, the original form of court days fell to the wayside.

Around 1964 "court day" was brought back in a festival forum. With this new festival, an old problem that was not as noticeable in the early court days became more apparent with the new. We began to find stolen guns and other stolen property from throughout the area. With an estimated crowd of fifteen to twenty thousand people in a five-block area one could expect some problems to arise. Every year we would place at least one piece of recovered stolen property in our property room. This would vary from one year to the next. I do not wish to imply that our court day was a den of thieves, but people will be people and a flea market atmosphere sometimes brings in stolen property. For the most part what we recovered were few in numbers and usually low value.

With our 1994 court day a new and unique problem occurred that dealt directly with our property section. A gentleman with a nationally known company stopped by our department on the first day of last year's event. He informed us that he had located one vendor who was selling counterfeit purses and sweatshirts. He had a copy of the copyright and counterfeit section of the Kentucky Revised Statues and asked us to go with him to speak with the vendor. What we found was quite impressive. A nationally known purse valued around four hundred dollars was reproduced with a counterfeit label and was being sold for fifty dollars. Also located were nationally known sweat shirts valued around forty dollars being sold for fifteen dollars with counterfeited labels. In all, over twenty thousand dollars (retail value) of counterfeit items were offered for sale.

The representative from the company did not want to file charges against these counterfeiters. He only wished to have the product removed from the vendor. We checked with our local prosecutor who informed us it was up to the company to file charges against the vendor. As the representative did not wish to pursue this through the courts, our only recourse would be to hold the counterfeit items in our property section. The vendor signed a waiver to release the items to our department along with a waiver to the company's representative admitting the sale of counterfeit items. The question now was who owned the purses and sweat shirts?

With no charges being placed against the vendor we could not release the items to the company's representative as they were released to our department. The representative requested the property be destroyed. Until we could obtain a clarification of who owned this property and what to do with it, our responsibility was to store the items until it could be resolved. A total of three hundred sweat shirts and 250 purses required a place in our limited property section.

After several days of telephone conversations with the company's main office and meetings with our prosecutor, a compromise was made. It was decided that if the labels were removed from all the items, the main office had no problem with releasing their rights to ownership. The vendor who re leased the items to us did not wish to file for ownership due to their agreement with the company. After climbing over the many boxes of recovered items for several days, it was agreed by all parties involved to donate them to a local charity. With the agreement we avoided the possibility of being required to destroy the property and a good use of the clothing would be made.

As court day 1995 approached, arrangements were made to make room in the property room if a similar incident occurred. As expected, it did. We recovered over four hundred sweat shirts from another vendor and once again the victim company only wished to remove the items from them. Waivers were signed and the property was again donated to charity. We encouraged the victim company to follow through with charges but they felt this would be the best for everyone involved. 

Large property seizures always create a storage problem. Fortunately, we were prepared for a large property recovery this year. We learned from experience to be prepared so we would not have to scramble to make arrangements at the last second. Climbing over boxes in our property rooms makes a long work day for property officers with their daily work schedule. Not all departments have access to large property storage areas but contingency plans should be made for any type of situation that might arise.