Austin City Council is considering an ordinance that would require secondhand stores in Austin to file their transactions with the Austin Police Department in an attempt to reduce property crime.

Barksdale English, spokesman for Austin City Council member Bill Spelman, said this ordinance would apply to stores in the jewelry, clothing, electronics and auto industries.

“The ordinance will ask retailers of secondhand goods to register with the city and document all secondhand products that they buy from individuals,” English said. “Retailers would also be required to keep certain types of products in their inventory for a week to 10 days.”

He said Austin City Council members hope this ordinance will lead to decreased sales of stolen items in secondhand stores and a reduction in property crime.

“The idea here is to create a database of secondhand products that the Austin Police Department can search during a property crime investigation,” English said. “If a stolen item is found in the database within the required holding period, APD can then recover that item and learn more about who sold it and when.”

He said this ordinance will help APD locate criminals and make it harder for thieves to operate in Austin.

“It is important to give APD as many effective tools as possible to combat our persistent property crime issues in the city,” English said. “Statistics indicate that about 50 percent of the property crime committed in the city is perpetrated by about 10 percent of the thieves working here. If we can reduce the number of vendors they can sell their stolen goods to then we’re cutting off an important revenue stream for them.“

Gregg Burger, general manager of Precision Camera, said the store already submits a record to the city of their used equipment purchases.

“We send them our information once a month anyway and we have to wait seven days to sell anything that has a serial number,” Burger said. “We will now have to submit this to an online database.”

Burger said his store’s policy has helped track down criminals and thinks the city-wide implementation of the policy will help victims of theft.

“I think it’s fine,” Burger said. “It’s going to help recover a lot of stolen goods from people.”

Glenn Paul, spokesman for Plato’s Closet in Austin, said he sees this ordinance as a negative step towards greater regulation of his business.

“We often put items out for sale the same day that they are bought,” said Paul. “Holding items for 10 days would be a tremendous extra cost for our business.”

Paul said he thinks the ordinance is mainly targeted towards highly trafficked items that have tracking numbers such as jewelry and audio equipment. However, he will be concerned if the regulations begin to trickle down into his business.

Paul said the corporate offices for Plato’s Closet have noticed similar ordinances in other cities and warned him to be aware of these types of regulations.

“Nobody wants to be in the position of selling stolen items,” said Paul. “But I am not sure what kind of benefit this is going to have in the used clothing market.”

Printed on Thursday, February 16, 2012 as: Rule may help lower property crime