Columbia pawn shop changes tabled until June

The Columbia City Council unanimously voted Monday to reconsider changes to rules governing pawn shops in the town.

The group was scheduled to decide whether or not to introduce a host of rules for pawn shops, specific to Columbia, in an attempt to deter a decade-high number of burglaries. Along with taking down information about the person bringing the item into the store, the new ordinance would require stores to take photos of the person and hold onto that item for at least seven days before offering it for resale.

The council will again take up the issue at the first meeting of June.

Second Ward councilman Michael Trapp offered the idea for changes to tackle the issue of theft and drug addiction in town. The councilman, who also serves as executive director of Phoenix Health Programs in Columbia, said some addicts often fall back to selling stolen goods quickly to feed a habit, and saw the measure as a way to help the police gather better evidence for burglary investigations.

“If we, as a community, are going to decide to have police officers than is standard for communities our size, then we should look for every possible public policy angle to support and facilitate the solving of crime,” Trapp said.

Mayor Bob McDavid commended Trapp for the intent, but expressed doubts about the ordinance’s effect. He said it lacked input from pawn shops and other “secondhand” stores, and may instead push the resale of stolen goods to places outside Columbia – making it harder for police to investigate the crimes.

Some pawn shops in town already coordinate their inventory with law enforcement. Dan Trim, owner of Tiger Pawn, uses a computer program to enter the information of each item, and person bringing the item to the store, for records. Both Columbia police and Boone County sheriff’s deputies can then cross-reference descriptions of stolen items, like serial numbers, against that list to see if anyone has brought in a potentially stolen item.

“And [if] they see something, they’ll say ‘Hey, we got a match, I want you to hold that,'” Trim told ABC 17 News.

Tiger Pawn also requires sellers to provide photo ID, and scans the ID to keep along with that record. Trim said while burglary reports went up in 2015, police only flagged less than a dozen stolen items at his store.

“While the idea is really good, I think that bringing the other, smaller stores up to our level will really help,” Trim said.

The second “phase” of the rules, as Trapp put it, would include a report on other “secondhand” shops, like sporting goods, jewelery and electronic resale stores and burglary investigations.