The case was brought to our attention by reader Piotr. His Audi 80 was stolen from outside a block of flats on Wybickiego Street in January 2010. In October, a policeman from Pieńsk called him and informed him that the car had been found there and transported to a police car park in Jelenia Góra. Piotr went to the car park, where they showed him his Audi. “The identification numbers had been tampered with,” Piotr says. “And, most amusingly, the thief had installed an alarm in it.”
Visually, the car was in good condition. However, the discharged battery made it impossible to assess its actual technical condition. The car had been flooded because someone had left the fuse-box cover open. The car-park attendant said that the car had been technically sound when it was driven to the car park in July. “I do not know why I was not notified until October if the car had been found earlier, as the car-park employee’s words indicated,” Piotr wonders. He also says that no one takes particularly good care of the cars kept at the police car park. “Right in front of me, the attendant swung open the car door so forcefully that it hit a high-end BMW 6 parked next to it with full force,” the man recounts.
After inspecting his car, Piotr signed a document declaring that he would collect it. But he could not take it away. Formalities had to be completed, of which the man knew nothing. He only found out that in Jelenia Góra they merely keep stolen cars and that their role ends there. So he called Pieńsk. There he was informed that the case had been taken over by the prosecutor’s office in Zgorzelec (the Pieńsk municipality falls under its jurisdiction), and was given the prosecutor’s office telephone number and the name of the person handling the case—prosecutor Barbara Ziemblicka.
Piotr tried to contact Ziemblicka for a month. But he was told that she was either busy or on sick leave. When he finally got through, she asked him for the case number. “Everything so far had been handled by telephone,” Piotr explains. “I had not received any letter, let alone known the case number. I wanted to find that out from the prosecutor’s office. Unfortunately, when I said I did not know the case number, I was told that Ms Ziemblicka had so many cases on her hands that she would not search the files for me now. She told me to wait for a letter.”
The first and only letter came from the court in Żagań. It was an indictment against three people who stole cars, including Piotr’s Audi. More than a year in prison was proposed for the thief who was proven to have stolen three other cars as well. The thief confessed to the thefts. He had not acted alone. An acquaintance kept the stolen cars for him, while another man dealt with changing the identification numbers. It was not until March 2011 that the hearing took place. The rightful owners’ car had already been deteriorating in the police car park for more than half a year.
Barbara Ziemblicka, who turned the injured party away, also did not answer our journalist’s questions. She replied that she did not provide information by telephone because she could not verify the caller’s identity. We contacted the spokesperson for the Jelenia Góra Regional Prosecutor’s Office, Violetta Niziołek, who explained the entire situation without any problems—over the telephone.
“The injured party should contact the court in Żagań, where they will provide information about when and on what basis he will be able to collect the car,” the spokesperson explained. “Recovering stolen cars in which the thief replaced components—an engine or other parts—is legally complicated. I understand initially that components from another car had been installed in the stolen Audi. The injured party’s car became physical evidence and was left at the court’s disposal. Once all procedures concerning the ownership of the parts installed in the car have been completed, the owner will be able to recover the car.”
Our reader should have received the information we obtained from the prosecutor’s office spokesperson immediately after being notified that his car had been recovered. Instead, he was sent from one police station to another. At the Zgorzelec prosecutor’s office, which handled the case, he was treated like an unwelcome petitioner. It is no wonder that Piotr does not have a very favourable opinion of the justice system. “Perhaps it really is better to steal in this country,” he says ironically. “After all the trouble connected with the stolen car, all that remains is to wait for them to start charging me for the police car park. In the end, I signed a document saying that I had decided to collect the car. And that was in October last year.”
(information: ii)