Suggestions on How to Change The Law

1. Clarify the law regarding title. Although it was the SL DA's office who misinterpretted the law, better clarification is needed to ensure that title remains with the original owner in cases of theft.

2. Increase requirements for pawn shops to positively identify where a person actually lives. These new requirements could be as simple as requiring a mailing address where pawned money could be sent, or as complex and requiring a credit card where a quick check could be run to match up the address with the credit card.

3. Leverage the database to 'flag' known and/or suspected criminals from selling to pawn. If the police know someone is selling stolen items, make it so that he can't sell to any pawnshop anymore.

4. Leverage the database to match previously unidentifiable items. If we used the database to say "Criminal X sold a bike and trimmers to Pawn X and a lawn mower and string trimmer to Pawn Y, this must be the items described by the victim."

5. Return the holding period for pawn shops for 'sold' items to a more reasonable time of 15 business days. In the recent laws passed the holding period for 'sold' items was reduced from 30 days to 10 days, while 'pawned' items remained at 30 days. This change seems counterintuitive. It would seem those looking for easy cash are very unlikely to pawn an item versus selling it.

6. Open the database to the public and educate them on its existence. Just as I found my bike on eBay, allowing the public to monitor these databases will likely result in even more property recovery.

 

Update (1/19/2007)

Meeting with State Representatives, Representatives of Pawn Shops and Law Enforcement

Thanks to Senator Ross Romero, I was able to recently meet with the sponsor of the pawn shop bill in question, Rebecca Lockhart, along with representatives of the pawn industry and law enforcement officials.  It was a productive meeting in that I was able to gain additional perspective on the pawn shop business and they were also able to see how certain laws and the interpretation of them affect the citizens of Utah.

They were attentive in listening to my issues and concerns and open to considering ways to change the laws to better serve everybody.  It should be noted that these representatives of pawn shops in Utah could be considered the ‘good guys’ in that they are interested in making sure that pawn shops operate in an ethical manner. 

They have created an oversight committee along with law enforcement officials and are working to get other industries that potentially deal in stolen goods operating under the provisions of the law including second-hand and antique stores.  The formation of this committee is, in my opinion, a very good thing.

While all present had their obvious biases, there was open dialogue and some concessions were made.  Others points are being considered and others still need to be readdressed/improved in the future.  The best news being that there was some progress.  All agreed that the best approach was to work together and to look at modifications of existing pawn laws.

Among what I consider wins:

  1. Wording in the existing law that may have lead to confusion that caused the Salt Lake District Attorney’s office will be corrected.  The DA incorrectly interpret the law to mean that no sold items through pawn should be seized once they had been sold to a third-party.  They incorrectly applied a legal concept of ‘Bonafide Purchaser of Good Intent’ to stolen items and misinformed law enforcement on correct procedure.  As I understand it, this concept applies only to items that were ‘entrusted’ to another party, and not items that are stolen. As such, any victim of theft in Utah should know that they DO NOT lose title to stolen property, no matter how many times it has been sold, and no matter how local law enforcement choses to interpret the law. Your only recourse may be through civil courts, but you have recourse nonetheless.
  2. Addition of other businesses to the provisions of the existing law, including second hand stores and antique stores, will allow for the funding of a better database that will allow law enforcement to better find stolen property.  The current database, while a step forward, is woefully inadequate.
    1. A better database may also accommodate the ability for officers to flag thieves to pawn owners to notify them not to buy.
    2. A better database can notify law enforcement if stolen items appear (they have to manually search now)
    3. It also helps to better accommodate associations and patterns of crimes (ie, person x has sold 300 items in 2 years, we want to look closer at him, or they sell lots of bikes, etc etc)
    4. A better database also may accommodate a public view that can reduce the burden on law enforcement and also allow people to identify their own items better.  It should be noted the pawn representatives were not keen on this idea, but law enforcement did seem to be.

 

Things they are willing to consider, but no good solution is currently available:

  1. Better address verification.  In my case, my thief has a false address on file.  Suggestions of requiring credit card or bank account information or a mailing address for payment to be sent to according to pawn shops often do not work with much of their clientele who don’t have a credit card or bank account for various reason.
  2. Increasing the holding period from only 10 days was also not considered right now as it was a major stumbling block to get the other industries mentioned above on board.  They also have to address issues regarding goods that have a time period associated with their value (such as Jazz tickets).  This was most bothersome for me, as I feel like the time is far too short, but we take our wins where we can.
  3. Opening the database to public view. Law enforcement who was there seemed to like this idea, the pawn shops did not, and I am not certain why. They cited an increase in 'false positives' etc, but as one of the officers there noted, they essentially give the public view of the database when people arrive at their desk and they look at it together. The public view could restrict specifics such as what shop it is at and this would need to be further filtered by the police to verify real claims. I suspect that some of the resistence regarding this by pawnshop owners is they suspect themselves that they get more stolen items than they realize.

In short, the progress was small but still progress thanks to you.  I hope that these continued efforts better protect victims of theft, but it still doesn’t overshadow the importance of protecting yourself first.  So make sure that you write down the serial numbers of all of your valuable property and also make sure you lock your things up well. 

If you have any other ideas on how to better improve the laws regarding pawn shops, second hand stores and the likes please feel free to contact me and I’ll get them to the appropriate people.

Again, thanks again for you help.

Brian Verhaaren

Addtional Note: The results of all of this has exposed a few things. 1. The DA's office has been misinterpreting the law. It is disappointed to see this sort of thing. 2. While some have dismissed my experience as an anomoly, the fact that two stolen bikes were found through the same pawn shop seems indicate to me that more than the '1-5% items in pawn are stolen' stat that is often cited is inaccurate. It is frustrating that I can't catch the thief because they failed to get a real address. 3. I still would like to see pawn shops held more accountable for their actions. While many pawn shops are honest, others are not. Witzel's pawn chopped up my bike in what was obviously an attempt to alter its appearance, which seems to indicate they knew it was stolen. They also bought from a person who had brought in over 300 items, many of which were like items (ie lawn mowers etc). Again, this number alone, for one pawn shop, and one person over the course of two years seems to indicate that more than 1-5% of pawned items are stolen.