Just wondering if someone with more legal knowledge could clarify, since it sounds as if the following scenario is plausible. How much is it?
Police are chasing a drug dealer on foot. The drug dealer jumps off a small overhang into a parking lot below, and on top of your car. In the process he drops a bag of coke on your car, and then keeps running. Because of this your car is seized as "evidence". Police are not required to return it or compensate you in any way for it.
Something like this actually happened on 'Cops'. Two women stole a pickup truck, used drugs in it, and police permanently seized the truck from the rightful owner because of the thieves' drug use.
Cite?
Cops ain't exactly
Law and Order. It doesn't deal with the long term consequences of what happens. I can easily see the owner not having gotten back his vehicle by the end of the show, but getting it back the next day when the cameras weren't around. The police would want to process the vehicle for evidence, and maybe check that the vehicle was indeed stolen and not simply reported as such after the fact to hide his involvement. Because if he lent them the vehicle, then yes it would be impoundable.
There's also the possibility that if those women had been using it as a mobile meth lab, it was too toxic to be returned until it was cleaned up. The cost of the cleanup is such that it might well be cheaper for his insurance company (assuming he had comprehensive insurance) to total the vehicle and cut him a check.
There's also the possibility that if the truck had been stolen long enough for him to get a check from the insurance company, that it would then be the company's instead of his.
Last but not least, they may have been keeping the truck as evidence in the auto theft charge, not the drug charge.
Between all the possible reasons it would be reasonable for the return of the truck to not be shown on the show and your heightened antipathy to authority in general, I'd need a cite from a reputable source before I'd accept your claim of what happened as the truth.
