Pawnbrokers, secondhand dealers concerned about new rules
Published 2:30 pm Thursday, September 22, 2016
Rules to make it more easy and faster for pawnbrokers and secondhand dealers to determine whom they can and can’t accept property from came up for a vote before the Auburn City Council on Monday evening.
And passed unanimously.
But not before local pawnbrokers had informed city leaders about shortcomings and unintended consequences of the amended ordinance.
And sympathetic City leaders agreed to revisit the issue again in three to four months to see how the ordinance is working, and whether it needs to be fixed.
“If there are things in there that become unworkable, I’m sure we can respond to your concerns, make future adjustments,” said Councilman John Holman.
State law dating to 1984 makes it a gross misdemeanor for pawnbrokers, secondhand dealers and others of their type to receive property from anybody who is under the influence of intoxicating liquor or drugs.
Figuring out who’s stoned, that can be easy enough. What’s tough is that the prohibition extends equally to persons known to have been convicted of burglary, robbery, fraud, forgery, auto theft, identity theft, possession or receipt of stolen property and to those convicted of drug-related crimes within 10 years of the proposed exchange.
Changes to the ordinance were meant to answer this question: how is the pawnbroker, the secondhand dealer supposed to know who is in the set that commits property crimes? There is no easy way to do it. As amended, the new rules allow pawnbrokers and secondhand dealers free access to and use of an Auburn Police list that compiles the names of such shady characters.
In brief, the new rules say as follows: every pawnbroker and secondhand dealer doing business in Auburn has to require the person with whom each transaction is completed to produce a valid, government-issued, photo identification card, and to verify the accuracy of the name that person has provided.
Requiring pawnbrokers and others to use the list before they accept property from anyone, City officials say, will dampen the latter set’s ability to obtain money for stolen property, to the general welfare and benefit.
Names are purged from the list after 10 years have passed from the infractions.
Mike Transue, an attorney representing First Cash and Cash America, suggested changes to the ordinance.
“We would just like to work with your staff and help out with some of the specifics as they relate to the delegation of authority to the police team to create, maintain and update the list,” Transue said. “There are some concerns we have in there as to how that list is implemented, and we would like some specificity as it relates to how that list gets created and updated.”
As amended, Transue noted, the ordinance authorizes the imposition of penalties for violations, piling them top of penalties that are already part of state law. Specifically, he said, it adds drug crimes to the list of five no-buy-from-this-guy offenses that state law already mandates, and the requirement that pawnbrokers verify the identities of people standing before them at the counter.
“Verifications and drug offenses are terms we would like to see clarified and their definitions brought out,” Transue said. “We think verification already occurs when we look at somebody and look at their ID … just like in a restaurant when they ask somebody if they are 21.”
And rather than turning people away at the counter, Transue argued, many times it’s better for the pawnbroker to take the property in because if they do, police can flag it, and pawnbrokers, he said, are in the best position to get it back to the legal owner.
Mike Hirman, investigations commander for the Auburn Police Department, recently cited for the council an increase in property crimes and law enforcement’s desire to do something about that. Indeed, in a recent four-month period, Hirman said, detectives seized more than $218,000 worth of stolen property from pawn shops and returned it to Auburn residents and others outside of the city.
