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Forney Police Pleased with Online Auction Source

Denise Bell
Post Managing Editor

April 10, 2009

Required to conduct public auctions of seized property and used city property, the Forney Police Department began contracting Rene’ Bates Auctioneers, an internet auction source, in January 2008.

On Thursday morning Rene’ Bates Auctioneers completed the third online public auction held by the Forney Police Department when they auctioned off a 1999 Ford Crown Victoria automobile.

The vehicle was recently retired from city service and when the online auction closed at 9:00 a.m. the vehicle had been bid on over a dozen times and eventually sold for $ 3,000.00.

FPD Administrative Assistant Tiffany Hopkins stated “We started using the online auction after the October 2006 public auction failed to draw any bidders. We had advertised a seized 2004 Ford Mustang with a starting bid of $ 1,000.00. We have to start the bidding at what we have put into the vehicle, towing, and storage. But when the auction day rolled around no one showed up to bid on the car. So we had to start over and the process is time consuming, so we decided to try an online auction source.”

According to Hopkins, the FPD has now held three online auctions thru Rene Bates Auctioneers. The first auction held in January 2008 auctioned off a seized 1996 Honda Civic which sold for $ 1,450.00 and a 1995 GMC Truck that the city retired and it sold for $ 1,705.00.

The second online auction was held in August 2008 and had considerably more items. Two retired police cruisers that went for $ 1,909.00 and $ 2,450.00, a police motorcycle that sold for $ 2,650.00 and an assortment of items that included ten bikes, two car stereos, a set of police cruiser flashing lights, and an antique reel-to-reel tape recorder that had been used at the police station many years ago.

Hopkins excitedly stated “It’s awesome. I don’t have to do anything. They take care of the entire auction process for us. I don’t even have to collect the money. I just schedule viewings of the items when anyone calls wanting to see them and Rene’ Bates takes care of everything else.”

Funds acquired from the “public auction of property seized” by the Forney Police Department must only be used for the purposes of police training.

Funds acquired from the auctioning off of property owned by the Forney Police or the City must be deposited into the General Fund.

Interested citizens may visit http://www.renebates.com/cgi-bin/mncal.cgi?bates to view the recently closed Forney Police Department auction along with numerous other online public auctions being conducted by cities and municipals across Texas.