Spokane County pawn shops may require photos, thumbprints

Detectives may soon have another tool in the fight against theft.

The Spokane County Commission today will consider new regulations to require pawn shops to take pictures or thumbprints of people who pawn merchandise.

Investigators say the regulations will help them get evidence when someone is caught pawning stolen goods, but some pawn shop owners say the rules would violate customer privacy and be of little use to police.

Although there are few pawn shops within the county’s jurisdiction, the city of Spokane is expected to consider the same changes later this year. Spokane Valley approved a similar measure in 2005.

Pawn shops throughout the county already file reports that include the name and address of each person who pawns.

Spokane Valley Police Chief Cal Walker said while those reports are helpful in finding stolen goods, they aren’t as good at pointing to thieves, in part because culprits sometimes don’t use valid IDs.

“If we have the photograph, that’s a notch up on the evidentiary value,” Walker said.

Gary Singer, who owns Dutch’s Pawn Shop in downtown Spokane, said he supports efforts to report transactions to police. However, taking a thumbprint or picture of customers is intrusive and won’t provide police with additional information, he said. He said it’s rare for customers to use fake IDs.

“It will not enable the police to recover any more stolen merchandise,” Singer said. “It’s a waste of time and effort.”

Spokane County sheriff’s Detective Mark Stewart said an important addition in the proposed ordinance would require that pawn reports be filed electronically.

Most shops already file electronically, but a few don’t, creating headaches for the department, Stewart said. Filing online allows pawned items to be entered into a database that detectives can easily check.

Before the database was created, investigators rarely searched pawn records because they had to go through paper files of the 22,000 pawn dealings that occur each month, Stewart said.