My father passed away a few years ago, I had an incident having to do with domestic violence in which they confiscated all firearms at my home (not mine). However it has been resolved and I was not at fault and neither were the parties of the aforementioned firearms. 

Question is, these two firearms are still in the possession of my local police department - how ever the owner of the firearms is no longer with us, what’s the route to take with that situation? I assume I can get a firearms license and take them but what if I don’t currently hold one? How does this property change hands? Do they destroy it and pay me? I’m just unsure.

The two firearms in question are a glock 36 and a 357.

This is of course in NJ, lol.

 

I think only the owner of the firearms will be able to get them from PD. 

Who legally owns the firearms?  Did your father have a surviving spouse(your mother)?   If not, was there a will or how was his estate managed?  

Whoever the rightful heir to the property is would have to prove to the police it is they. Then you should be able to collect the items.

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If they destroy them, you can be 100% sure no one is going to pay you anything.

How old is this issue?  The owner of the firearms should have got them back when it was resolved.  How was it resolved?

The executor or administrator of the estate would be the one who has to get them back. They will probably need a lawyer to at least write letters. I don't think the police will just hand them over.  That will probably cost more than the guns are worth.

The easiest way to approach this is to have the executor or administrator of his estate contact the police to ask them what they want for the firearms to be turned over.  That would be a start to see what needs to be done.

Given the run around most police departments give you to just get an FID or purchase permit, one might reasonably expect this to be epic.

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I had a family member go through a very similar situation. If your father was married the guns belong to his spouse and as long as that person meets the requirements to obtain a FID they can pick the guns up from the local PD and then legally sell or transfer them to anyone they want. If there is no spouse the guns would belong to the next of kin or whoever the executor of the estate designates ownership to if they were not willed to someone.

With that said you will more than likely have to hire a lawyer and threaten legal action before the PD will give up the guns. I know my family member did. The PD were real assholes about the situation and stalled for probably over a year before releasing the guns. when the guns were finally returned all of the magazines (Glock) were mysteriously missing (Humm I wonder where they went)

I called the county prosecutors office to report that the magazines went missing when sitting in a police evidence room and to their credit they did look into it but in the end they covered their tracks and there was no record of any magazines being confiscated just the guns themselves.

They also took all of the ammo in the house and said that they could not legally return ammo (not sure if this is true we didn't pursue it)

 

 

Was there a receipt given at the time?  Was it long ago enough that the cops or chief involved are still there?  No to any of these questions may result in the legal loophole of “what gun?”  

What’s the town?

It's pretty damn bad when the police are thieves. What towns?

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Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys has been a question since the beginning of time. 

Who are the good guys and who are the bad guys has been a question since the beginning of time. 

It shouldn't be, but you are correct.

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The county prosecutors usually set up a protocol on what a PD is to do with seized firearms and how long they can store them once they are not needed as "evidence". Some counties required them to be destroyed after 180 days if not returned to the owner or sold to an FFL , others seem to let them sit for years. In some counties (Bergen comes to mind) if your guns are seized for any reason you are almost certainly never going to get them back without a court order. You're only other option then would be to sell them to an FFL. I would agree with what others have said, contact the PD to see what the lawful owner needs to do to get them returned, the need for a lawyer is going to be likely.