You KNOW why. The average street thug doesn't have anything more valuable than a little bling and a (likely stolen or POS) handgun, maybe some drugs...at best a few hundred market value. Besides, those sh*ts will sneak up on you and bust a cap in your arse while you're downing coffee and a donut.
But that motorcycle the po-po just jacked...stole....impounded...as part of their CAF program will net a minimum of 5-10K at the sale, and that's only if the owner is a real badass breathing down someone's back who is bidding against him. It might bring more.
Ka-Ching!
@Smokin Joe They also do it as a power trip. I have been riding since 1965,and been riding custom Harley's/choppers since I built my first one in 1970,a 1940 knucklehead with a 3/4 inch rake,rigid frame,and 15 over springer I extended myself. The knuckle engine had panhead flywheels,rods,pistons,and cylinders,and an original knuckle "lightening" valve train. It would FLY!
The very first day I got it back on the road I was stopped and given a bogus ticket by a highway patrolman who testified in court that "I was going down highway xxx and spotted this long-haired,hippy-looking individual passing traffic at a high rate of speed (notice I wasn't clocked on his radar)" as justification for stopping me and writing me a ticket.
I once had some motorcycle cops with the Denver PD admit to me that "We are going to keep stopping and harrassing you until you sell your Harley and buy a respectable motorcycle like we ride (Kawasaki). They didn't seem amused when I told them just because their mamas wouldn't let THEM ride Harley's,that didn't mean that actual men couldn't ride them..
I once stopped a Denver PD patrol car after midnight and reported seeing a couple of guys breaking into an apartment by crawling through the back window. Their response was to search me for drugs and weapons,and to threaten to arrest me for filing false charges. It was a "bad neighborhood" where the cops NEVER showed up without a SWAT truck as backup,and they were just passing through it when I stopped them to report the B&E. Their excuse for not checking it out was to ask me "How do you know it wasn't just someone who had lost their keys?"
The worse offense was I once stopped an attempted armed robbery at the liquor store on the corner by knocking the robber out. The lone female running the store that night called the cops and asked me to wait until they showed up,so I handed her my 44 and told her to hide it under the counter as a store gun because I KNEW the DPD was going to pat me down and would arrest me if they found the gun.
When the DPD,complete with the detective car,two squad cars,and the SWAT van showed up about 30 minutes later,the first thing they did was lean ME over the counter and pat me down for weapons,and then give me a ration of crap for "interfering with police business" and threatening to lock me up if I did it again. Little did these asshats know that I had traffic warrants out for my arrest in another name,and had hidden that ID with the 44. That was what you had to do if you rode a custom Harley in Denver back then,and wanted to stay out of jail. Before I got the false ID,I had the DPD coming around my apartment while I was at work and interviewing my landlord and my neighbors and asking about my "criminal activity" Which while it pissed me off,worked in my favor because nobody in that neighborhood was a fan of the DPD,and the old woman living upstairs even told me she had told them I had moved out and gone "somewhere" back east.
I was even stopped riding home from school at midnight in a blizzard,and given a ticket for "operating a unsafe vehicle. That ticket was the reason for one of my warrants. I would have had to have missed a day of work to get that BS ticket dismissed,and couldn't afford to do that,so I missed court and they issued a warrant for my arrest.
If I had lived in Denver another 2 years,I would have probably been shooting at them from rooftops.