Council’s pawnshop plan full of collateral damage

City Councilor Diane Gibson’s effort to reel in property crime by making pawnshops as unattractive as possible to desperate folks with something to sell promises to turn the resale of stolen goods into a game of Whack-a-Mole.

Because as long as anonymous online services like Craigslist and Ebay are operating and metro-area flea markets thrive, putting pawnshops out of business — or outside city limits — isn’t likely to deter thieves from taking, then fencing, things that aren’t theirs. And there’s little evidence city and state law are being enforced to their fullest now — something that should occur before implementing new stringent rules.

It’s understandable elected officials want to so something, considering Albuquerque accounts for nearly half of the state’s property crime, which is the highest in the nation per capita. But they need to do something smarter than simply pile on to pawnbrokers’ existing responsibilities.

Under the city’s current Pawnbrokers Ordinance and state law, pawnshops already are supposed to fill out separate forms daily on every item pawned or purchased, including: a description of the item; its model and serial number and any distinguishing marks, if available; the time and date of the transaction; the name and address of the person pawning or selling the item; a detailed physical description of that person; and his/her date of birth. Those forms have to be completed by noon the day after the transaction and “made available” to police within three days. The pawnshop has to keep those forms for at least a year.

Rather than require shops to get info to police sooner (it’s the digital age and a third-party company puts it together), or urge police to act on it, Gibson instead wants shops to also: Photocopy the customer’s government-issued ID. Take their thumbprint.

Photograph every item bought or pawned.

And pay customers via a check in the mail after a threeday waiting period.

Gibson also wants buyers of precious metals and gems to be covered, although a revision is supposed to exclude jewelry stores and coin-buying businesses.

But here’s the rub: Most people who resort to using a pawnshop to meet an immediate financial need — whether it’s to buy diapers or make a car payment or score an eight-ball of meth — won’t wait three days for their money, and the city’s 18 permitted pawnshops wouldn’t last a month under that demand. And rest assured the mom and car buyer will wind up paying interest to a payday loan operation, while the meth-head will get his or her money some other way that could put someone’s life in jeopardy.

Michael Steinberg, owner of Osuna Pawn and president of the Albuquerque Pawnbrokers Association, says of the roughly 250,000 items taken by the association’s 16 pawnshops in 2016, Albuquerque police confiscated about 150 items.

Which brings us to APD, which wholeheartedly supports Gibson’s draconian rewrite. Sgt. Will Dorian, with APD’s Organized Crime Unit, argues a tougher ordinance is needed because criminals use pawnshops to convert stolen items into cash. No doubt, but APD hasn’t provided any verifiable statistics that could shed light on how big, or small, that problem is and why legitimate pawn customers are acceptable collateral damage.

Steinberg says despite all the information pawnshops currently provide to police — via that third-party company that compares the pawnshops’ information with APD property crime reports, and alerts the shops and police to potentially stolen items — he doesn’t hear from police all that often. It’s unclear if that online company is handing over a few pages or stacks of stolen property reports to police. Steinberg says he likely doesn’t hear from APD much because of its chronic understaffing. Dorian counters APD has a full-time detective on pawnshop detail and six other officers trained to work it. He says officers investigate suspicious items at pawnshops when they have time — so clearly it’s not a priority.

And it begs the question why sworn police officers instead of public safety aides (the city hired 18 last month), or some of the 25 civilian crime scene investigators the council approved hiring earlier this year, haven’t taken over some or all of the laborious desk work, flagging stolen items and identifying patterns and bad actors in the system, and freeing up between one and seven cops to track down burglars and robbers.

Gibson’s proposed ordinance is with the Finance and Government Operations Committee. It should stay there until revisions deliver results instead of unintended consequences.