Heard on MSNBC

[Herb Stahlke]

An MSNBC newsreader this morning said, "The police are now in custody
of the car."

Two Google hits out of first 100 have the custodial person or group as
subject and the person/object in custory as object of the preposition.
 The rest of the hits for "in custody of" are divided about 70/30
between sentences like

The child is in custody of her step mother.

and

Deaths in custody of aboriginal persons rose last year.

where the prepositional phrase is not complement of "custody."  The
OED notes a use like that of the MSNBC newsreader, but only with the
definite article, "in the custody of."

Herb

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