The Saga Endeth.

So, as some of you may remember, last summer my bike was vandalized IN my parking garage. Well, less vandalized and more stripped of valuable components by a skilled thief. My baby was violated.

I reported the theft, and worked with Sergeant Olson on my case. As luck would have it, the perp was nabbed and several (not all) of my components were recovered. I identified my shit, but they were placed into evidence for the impending trial.

This started the clock ticking on me trying to get my lost components back.

Fast forward 13 months and many emails, and finally my components were released from evidence. All I had to do was pick them up between 10-2 when the evidence building was open for business.

Convenient.

I went yesterday on my day off to retrieve my crap, and got a bit of a surprise. I signed for the evidence and the guy behind the bulletproof glass went and got it. He proceeded to bring out a messenger bag which had handlebars sticking out of it. He cut off the evidence tag and ha fed me the bag.

The whole bag.

Of all the evidence.

I kind of stood there for a second, unsure what exactly to do. I debated whether to rummage through the bag for my components and then return the rest, but I could just see this opening a huge can of worms with chain of custody and trying to return partial evidence….

So I took the bag and left.

Naturally my conscience got the better of me and I emailed Sgt. Olson and explained that I’d been mistakenly given all of the evidence.

I got a lovely email in return thanking me for my concern, but the case had already been adjudicated, there were no other claims, and the evidence was slated for destruction so I was free to keep any and all of it.

Which was nice because there were several Park Tool bike tools in the messenger bag. Tools I can use.

And ma be I can clean up the Chrome bike messenger bag and use that too!

And then donate some of the remaining components to a local bike collective.