At least three Wisconsin departments, including Franklin and West Allis, are weighing contracts with PropertyRoom.com, a California-based kind of eBay for cop shops that auctions everything from tools to electronics and diamond jewelry at its online site.

The draw, said Franklin Police Chief Richard Oliva, is the wider audience and greater profit at virtually no cost for the police department.

“eBay has proven that you can sell just about anything online,” said Oliva, whose department would be the first in Wisconsin to contract with PropertyRoom.com if his Common Council gives the OK.

“I see this as pure profit for the city,” he said. “We don’t have to monitor the site; we don’t monitor the auction. We just ship it out and basically wait for a check.”

PropertyRoom.com is the brainchild of Thomas Lane, a former Long Island police detective who took his cue from eBay and other online sites while researching them in 1998 for the investment counseling firm he owns with his siblings.

“We could see how successful they were and started thinking, if we could find a place where there was a lot of inventory, we could make it work,” he said.

They pitched the idea to several large police departments and, based on the feedback, launched the site a year later.

“Today we have over 500 contracts in 34 states,” said Lane, chairman of PropertyRoom.com, which counts former Los Angeles Police Chief Darryl Gates among the firm’s advisers.

Posted: 09|19|05 at 9:49 am. Filed under: US News.