Property recovery

If you know your property has been confiscated by police as a result of a seizure or recovery, please call the Evidence Control Unit at 204-986-6280 to determine if your property is here. We will be happy to check on your behalf to determine if your property is here, however public viewing of recovered property is not permitted.

When you contact our office, please have your occurrence (file) number and other details (i.e. Officer's name, date of event, property description, etc) ready. This will aid our staff in locating your property.

In some cases, special release procedures are required in order to preserve necessary court evidence for prosecution purposes. Please contact us to ensure your property can be released prior to court and an appointment can be made to perform the release.

In certain circumstances, you may send written authorization with the agent in the form of a letter signed by you. If you have received a letter from us, please read it carefully for special instructions including whether or not an 'agent' attendance is authorized or permitted.

Arrangements can be made (in some circumstances) to have property couriered to out of town residents, however this will be done so at the owner's expense.

Stolen bicycles

If you're bike has been stolen, you must report your bike lost or stolen to the police. It is advisable that you record and report the serial number to aid in the potential recovery of the bike. The better the description you can provide the better the chance of recovery/identification.

If your bike has been stolen, your first course of action should be to make a report.
You can:

Before making your report, have your bike’s serial number and any unique marks/engravings (distinguishable meaning unique to that individual bike, not a group of bikes) that will aid us matching your report to the bikes we find. The officer taking your complaint will ask you for this information.

S/he will be able to search our record systems almost immediately. Keep in mind that if you have unique descriptors but no serial number, it will likely be in our records system and can be found that way,

Viewing recovered bicycles

Our members do recover a number of bicycles throughout the year and each one is entered into our database with the aim of matching them with their rightful owner.

Once we have processed these bikes, they are sent to the City of Winnipeg Bicycle Recovery Office. If you have a good description of your stolen bicycle (serial number, colour, etc.), you may wish to contact their office through the City of Winnipeg 311 Service Centre.

Some bikes end up in our Evidence Control Unit. This facility is a secure facility, meaning access to the general public is not permitted.

If you have reported a complete detailed description of your bike, our staff may be able to find your bike when new bikes come in. If they do, you will be notified.

Unclaimed Property

With some restrictions and conditions, finders are permitted to claim property if it is unclaimed by an owner after 30 days. It is the finders responsibility to contact the Evidence Control Unit at P1 - 266 Graham Avenue, 204-986-6280, in order to make arrangements to pick up the found property in the event the owner does not claim it.

The following describes return restrictions and includes, but is not limited to, the following:

  • Firearms/ammunition/fireworks (including air rifles/ammo) of any kind are not returned to finders.
  • Anything which would bring discredit to the police or hinder police efforts to make Winnipeg a safe community (i.e. pornographic materials, radar detectors, liquor/alcohol, prescription and non-prescription narcotics/pills, unsafe products of any type, etc) are not returned to finders.
  • Cash amounts less than 25 dollars are not returned to finders.
  • Any items that are prohibited to possess (prohibited knives, etc) are not returned to finders.
  • Hazardous goods of any kind (including blood contaminated products and other biohazards) are not returned to finders.
  • Any item that a lawful owner has been identified for, but is unclaimed (includes wallets and contents, purses, tote bags, etc) are not returned to finders.
  • Any technical product that contains information therein that could potentially result in private information being released to a third party unknowingly (ie. computers, gaming consoles, cell phones, personal organizers and in some cases digital cameras (dependent on content/deletion capabilities), etc. are not returned to finders.
  • Unsafe item(s) or anything that cannot be proven as safe to use/operate such as Baby seats, strollers, motorcycle helmets, etc. are not returned to finders.
  • Anything else, at the discretion of Property staff, that is considered not suitable for return for a variety of reasons/circumstances not covered above. In these cases you may contact our office for an explanation if required.
Was this information helpful?

How can we make this web page better?

Information collected will be used to improve our website. Do not use this form to submit a request for service or information because it will not be forwarded to departments for response. To submit a request for service or information, contact 311.

This form is not intended to collect personal information; however, any personal information you choose to include in your comments is collected by the City of Winnipeg under the authority of section 36(1)(b) of the Freedom of Information and Protection of Privacy Act for the purpose of improving our website and will not be used or disclosed for any other purposes, except as authorized by law. Contact the Corporate Access and Privacy Officer by mail (City Clerk’s Department, Susan A. Thompson Building, 510 Main Street, Winnipeg MB, R3B 1B9) or by telephone (311) if you have any questions about the collection of this information.