I found coins and turned them into the police. Now (15 months later) they are giving me the run around without any specifics or plan.

September of 2017 I found coins in Connecticut.

They were clearly a collection, but also very obviously not put there by a collector. This led me to believe they were stolen so the same day I found them I dropped them off at the police station. The woman at the desk told me an officer would be down soon to ask some questions. After about 30 minutes she said I could just go and he would call me. This was my first issue with communication and the first sign that this would be more difficult than it needed to be.

Hours later, almost 10 pm, I get a call from the officer asking for the specifics of where did I find it, what time, etc. I gave him all of the info and he said they’d be checking out the area soon.

I never received another call after that. After 90 days I called because I had originally thought that unclaimed property would be returned to the finder after 90 days. I called the cop and he informed me it was actually 6 months and from there I would have 60 days to pick it up. So finally I’m 6 months from the original turn in date and the cop stops answering my calls. I left voicemails and messages with the receptionists, I even emailed him. After a month of this, he finally answers one day and says that because of the nature of the item (appearing to be stolen) they were extending the search an additional 6 months. I did not like the sound of this but didn’t want to fight it.

This would make the next check-in time Nov 1st 2018. I called and called and left voicemails and messages and it took 2 weeks for the cop to answer. He said everything was looking good and he was just waiting on the chief to sign off on it, and I should call after the weekend to check up on it. I did, and no answer. 3 more weeks of calling and the cop finally tells me the chief is refusing to sign off on it. He says because it seems stolen they need to keep looking. I said isn’t that why we extended it 6 months ago? The cop seems like he was on my side. He was very understanding and was explaining it to the best of his ability, it seemed. The cop asked the chief “well, how long does this go on?” To which the chief replied “ I don’t know.”

The cop told me to call the chief and speak to him directly to plead my case. I’ve been trying to compile a list of questions for the chief to establish a plan from here on out. It seems like they keep pushing the timeframe back to get me to forget about it.

Here are some of my questions, but I’m having trouble finding “finders rights” online and would like to talk specifics with the chief about my rights.

-What measures have been taken to locate the owner in the past 15 months the item has been in your possession?

-If nobody in the state has reported something stolen that even remotely matches the description, how long would a person have to report an item stolen and what kind of proof would they need for said police report?

-I was under the impression that items turned in needed to be publicly advertised. Has this happened? In the past 15 months I have seen found item reports on a specific local news website but never saw anything matching the description of the item I turned in.

Where should I go from here? I’m not interested in giving this up.