Apartment Sealed - Need my Stuff!

[LawQuestion15]

She was 40 and they needed to investigate, thus the apartment lockdown.
The police told me not to take anything from the place.
They did not want to know about residency issues....they wanted me OUT when the Medical Examiner arrived.

Obviously, it was a horrendous tragedy, but it's been 3 months, and I heard all is final in the investigation and it's closed, but now this headache!

To "YouAreGuilty" or anyone else who can please help me:
Yes, it's all worth under 5K
Yes, I want my specific STUFF back....it's worth way more to me than $$

So, I have laboriously prepared every single receipt of everything I have there.
The apartment is in Manhattan and I don't have access while the deadbeat is trying to stake a claim.

Which court do I go to? Surrogate (isn't it way beyond that now?) or Small claims? I don't even have his full contact info to claim against him. Or do I claim against the city?

So confused, please help

 

[LawQuestion15]

Bump

Bump, can some please kindly help me with my question?

 

[You Are Guilty]

Getting your actual stuff back is called "replevin", and that means even though your monetary damages are low enough for small claims court, you'd still have to file a case in Civil Court because that's the lowest court that has the power to issue the type of judgment you need.

Small Claims is actually part of Civil, and they are fairly used to pro se litigants there (in fact, they have a special Part set up just to deal with unrepresented litigants that is more "lenient" than regular judges would be).

You can read more about it here:

http://www.courts.state.ny.us/courts/nyc/civil/general.shtml