Online pawn reporting crucial to crime fight
Spokane has had its share of theft in the news lately.
Be it homes, businesses or Toyotas, there seems to be no end to a thief’s appetite.
The question is which appetite is being satiated – the need to acquire things or the need to support the area’s meth habit.
When I noticed there was a cavity in my garage ceiling where my bike used to hang, my first emotion was denial. That denial of the obvious wasn’t as strong as when my truck was stolen from my apartment parking slot.
Coming down to see my truck missing that morning had me giving myself the third degree: “Now think – what were you doing last night?”
My next step was comical. I started walking out the apartment front gate looking for my truck.
Miraculously I found it in five minutes, where the thieves showed some common sense or thief remorse and left it sans stereo.
The bike theft angered me because it couldn’t have come at a worse time. I needed that bike as a cornerstone of my New Year’s weight-loss resolution.
You jump to all sorts of crazy thoughts after a theft … like, are the bike thieves in cahoots with the fitness gyms?
Something inside me wanted to fight back. Years of exposure to Sherlock Holmes, the “Thin Man” and “Ironside” taught me that solving crime was easy. So, I hatched a plan:
I was going to search local pawn shops to find my bike. An article in The Spokesman-Review mentioned a Spokane County database that detectives can use to track items pawned in Spokane’s 30-odd pawn shops.
This database is a terrific idea. Recently, it was a key element in stolen tools and jewelry being returned to their rightful owner after the thief pawned them.
But my idea had holes – big holes. A trip to a local pawn shop – one store in the largest chain of local pawn shops – pointed out the holes.
I found the store manager knowledgeable and willing to help clue in the clueless, i.e. me. Care to take a guess how many bikes were pawned in the two-week period prior to my discovering the theft? Thirty.
That’s a lot of riders headed to the gyms or the STA buses or a sign of a truly bad economy. Or a lot of theft.
But the search continued as the shop operator asked for a description of my bike. I sounded like Bill Murray doing a “Saturday Night Live” routine – or at least judging by the laughter of the customers gathered around, it was a comedy routine of some sort.
“Men’s 26 inch, red, lightweight, with a foam seat (a lot of rough terrain on the Centennial Trail you know).” Missing from that description was the brand and the bike’s serial number – the two items needed the most. I knew it had Shimano shifters but couldn’t recall if it was 18 or 21 speeds.
Item one for this new database system to work is responsible owners who can identify their property.
The second big hole is that not all local pawn shops are computer literate. All report on the thousands of items pawned each month.
However, many shops choose to pay a small nonconformance fine and continue faxing their reports instead of sending their reports to the county online. This leaves a mountain of paperwork on a Spokane County desk.
Volunteers help input these reports, but they are running two months behind.
Want to fight crime? Join the ranks of the volunteers. At least be a responsible owner. Record makes, models and serial numbers of your property. Use an engraving tool.
Take videos of your belongings.
Pawn shop owners declare the best of intentions and indeed want to run a clean business. The shop owner I talked with mentioned having attended a meeting with other pawn shop operators on this very subject – online reporting.
Our community should demand complete pawn shop online reporting compliance.
Leaving the pawn shop, I tried to take the high road and put it in perspective.
With a son fighting in Iraq, that has to remain my focus. Thinking of him, I glanced at the back of my truck, to where my yellow “Support our troops” ribbon sits.
That’s when I noticed someone stole that, too.