Oh dear.
Grover1979, you were arrested by the information that you have provided already as they Police had information that suggested that you had stolen items at your home or within your sphere of influence. You handled stolen goods, albeit without claimed knowledge, but the specific definition of UK law was met:
1 – You received stolen goods. Your Solicitor should have told you this already, you did have a reasonable excuse to be in possession of them as you exercised due diligence when buying them though.
2 – You undertook the keeping, removing, disposing of or realisation of stolen goods by or for the benefit of another person ie, selling them on.
The other bikes where seized as the attending officers had reasonable grounds to suspect that the items might to be stolen and undertook to identify the correct owners in the time that they held them in their keeping, again something that any Solicitor would have told you.
It appears from your tale of woe that you were given time in a cell, normal practice in a police station, cells are there for the keeping of detained persons, at the time in the station custody block, you were a detained person.
It also suggests that you were not charged to court for the offence of handling stolen goods and that you got your items back, nor mal procedure. The police are not in a position of deciding who is guilty, they are fair and present the evidence as best as is possible to a CPS Solicitor for case decision making as would have been the case here. I suggest that it was not in the public interest to pursue a case against you based upon your reasonable explanation of the facts.
You may feel that your case was and is an unjust way of dealing with potential stolen property, but put yourself in another’s shoes, you see your stolen item for sale on a website like this, you inform the police of this, what would you want them to do……………….?
Your description of the way you were treated sounds a little unjust, but I feel that you are missing some pertinent points to the story that would explain some Police actions.
Good luck with your sales and riding in the future.
