Powers granted to ACT Policing in 2016 meant police could seize any car that failed to stop for them, a law aimed at limiting high-speed police pursuits after a series of deaths. There have been no deaths related to police pursuits since 2015 - but, together with stolen cars and those involved in other crimes, the police's Mitchell warehouse was in danger of being overrun with vehicles.

"That was my first sort of concern because it was apparent that our centre may not be big enough to hold all this," Detective Sergeant Noble said.

So the Exhibit Management Centre staff got to work. They combed through the updated legislation to find and enforce markers that could more quickly move seized vehicles. In cases where a car was linked to criminal activity, Detective Sergeant Noble and a colleague contacted case managers to request an update. They investigated opening another site. They made progress.

"If we didn’t do something we were going to get pushed out of house and home because we’d be inundated with cars. You wouldn’t be able to move," Detective Sergeant Noble said.

"I accept that cars will come in and yes, we’re happy to impound them as per the legislation, we’re happy for stolen [vehicles] to come in so the forensics team can examine it for DNA, fingerprints, get photographs, but the strategy that I’m trying to implement is once all that’s done why do we have to keep them here for years and years? Why can’t we get rid of them?"

ACT Policing's Exhibit Management Centre is, in Detective Sergeant Noble's words, a "repository for many, many items". The final resting place for Canberra's lost and found. A graveyard filled with illegal objects and those related to crimes.

There's cars and motorbikes. Bicycles. Stacks of guns. A crossbow. Swords. Furniture. Clothing. Jewellery. Locked-up hard drives filled with illegal material. Drug-related paraphenalia.

Drugs and cash are not kept on site but distributed to other agencies. ACT Policing recently launched an industrial shredder that can destroy things that shouldn't be in the community. Other items are auctioned, sold for scraps, buried or binned.

Everything that comes through the centre is carefully documented and filed. Staff see the mundane - cars, for example - and the unusual.

Top of Detective Sergeant Noble's list of memorable objects is a bag of sex toys, left in the back of a taxi and never claimed by its owner (nor the driver, for that matter, who became its lawful owner after three months). A human skull, apparently used as an ashtray, was not found to be linked to any crimes, and is now kept at the Australian Federal Police site at Majura.

A replica dinosaur gave some police a fright. And, for some time, a "huge" toy gun made from plastic was stored alongside its real counterparts.

“It was impressively well-made to replicate an existing firearm," Detective Sergeant Noble said.

"It was a very good effort, but it was produced by a toy shop."