A proposed class-action lawsuit says New York City’s system for returning property seized by police has left people unable to recover their belongings, even after criminal cases against them ended. Andrea Smith-Taylor is one of six plaintiffs; she says police took her children’s Christmas gifts and $3,500 in cash when they arrested her on Christmas Eve 2024.
Smith-Taylor was staying at a domestic violence shelter with her five children, ages 5 to 18, at the time, according to Gothamist. She had been shopping for clothing, boots, jewelry and a PlayStation. The outlet reported that her case was dismissed and sealed, but the gifts and cash were not returned; according to the lawsuit, officers gave away the gifts months after her arrest.
Brooklyn Defender Services and White & Case LLP filed the suit against New York City, the NYPD property clerk and Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch. It accuses the department of violating due-process rights and operating what the plaintiffs call an unconstitutional property-return system.
Other Plaintiffs Describe Lost Cars, Cash and a Son's Ashes
The lawsuit's other claims are jarring. One plaintiff alleges police seized laptops, keys, $11,000 in cash and more than 200 personal belongings. Another allegation in the suit says officers took a shooting victim's necklace, which contained his dead son's ashes.
Nygee Rogers-Green, 26, is also among the plaintiffs. He told Gothamist he was stopped by police who said they were looking for drugs, and that officers then seized his recently purchased $1,800 car. He was staying at a homeless shelter at the time and declined to discuss the charges against him, which were later dismissed and sealed.
Rogers-Green went to the precinct the day after his arrest to retrieve his belongings. According to the lawsuit, police told him they did not know where the items from his car were. He eventually found some of his belongings in bags by the dumpsters outside the station — he never recovered the car itself.
Thousands of Seized Items Go Unreturned Each Year
The scale of the problem extends well beyond these six plaintiffs. The NYPD returned about 460,000 — roughly 70% — of more than 630,000 seized items in 2025, according to department records cited by the same report. The department's annual seized-property report does not specify what happened to the remaining 30% of those items.
In 2025, the NYPD held onto more than $5 million in property that it said no one retrieved, per the same account. More than 9,200 vehicles were auctioned off that year, generating nearly $900,000 in revenue for the city, while the department kept 42 unclaimed vehicles and acquired 13 more through civil-forfeiture settlements or judgments.
The NYPD seizes property for a range of reasons, including stolen or abandoned cars, arrestees' belongings and items believed connected to crimes. Officers sometimes fail to provide property invoices or correctly completed paperwork, and in some cases decide on their own to retain or destroy belongings, the report notes.
A Property-Return System With a Troubled History
Brooklyn Defender Services wants the city to overhaul its property-return protocols. Attorney Talia Kamran said large amounts of property and money are lost because people lack advocates to help them navigate the system. Attorney Anca Grigore said people's belongings are protected under the Constitution.
An NYPD spokesperson declined to comment, saying the department had not yet received the lawsuit.
The city’s property-return rules have faced legal challenges before. Gothamist reported that a separate federal civil-rights case, McClendon v. Rosetti, found the city’s 1881 administrative code for civil forfeiture unconstitutional in 1972 and led to new procedures in 1974. That case concerned earlier civil-forfeiture rules, not the claims in this lawsuit. New York City adopted new seized-property rules in the 1990s, though the older policy remains in effect alongside them.
More recently, a 2016 federal lawsuit filed by The Bronx Defenders and the law firm Boies Schiller Flexner LLP resulted in a settlement requiring the NYPD to follow clear rules for seizing and returning property, train and supervise personnel, and submit to ongoing court oversight. As part of that settlement, the department turned over about 160,000 documents recording seized money and property, as reported by amNewYork.
Disputes over seized property are not new to New York courts either. A 2010 case reported by The New York Times described William LeRoy's fight to reclaim roughly 100 vintage subway signs that had been seized as evidence after his theft charges were dismissed. For now, the city's official guidance tells property owners to appear in person at the Property Clerk's office in the borough where the property was taken, or to have an authorized representative make the claim with a notarized letter, according to the New York City Police Department.
What the records and return rules show
The NYPD’s 2025 figures cited above do not explain what happened to the roughly 30% of seized items it did not report as returned. A New York City Comptroller audit also found discrepancies in NYPD public reports on seized and retained property for 2017 and 2018. That historical finding does not establish what happened to the items in this lawsuit. NYPD guidance says people seeking property other than a vehicle generally need an invoice number and proper identification. For property held as arrest evidence, the agency also lists a district attorney’s release or a supervising district attorney’s statement refusing to grant one, and says a demand must be made no later than 120 days after criminal proceedings end, according to the department’s property-return guidance.
