When people are arrested, they often surrender the property on their person to the police, as part of the arrest process. Since they will soon be taken to a police precinct or courthouse, removing property from their person, if temporary, seems reasonable, and not necessarily mysterious.

The mystery arises in what NYPD does with the property it takes from people. Until recent years, police disposition of seized property has been seen as a black hole, at least outside the NYPD. In 2017, the City Council passed a disclosure law requiring the NYPD to keep detailed figures on what kinds of property it had seized in the arrest process.