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<br /> ATTACHMENT B <br /> <br /> <br />PROPOSED USED MERCHANDISE DEALERS ORDINANCE <br />INFORMATION SHEET <br />Prepared by the Eugene Police Department <br /> <br /> <br />This information sheet has been prepared to outline several of the current trends involving <br />property crimes as they relate to used merchandise dealers, the current limitations of local law <br />enforcement jurisdictions to regulate used merchandise dealers, and the proposed solution to <br />assist law enforcement in the regulation of used merchandise dealers. In addition some of the <br />concerns of used merchandise dealers regarding the proposed implementation of the amended <br />Used Merchandise Dealer Ordinance and automated reporting are also included. <br /> <br /> <br />CURRENT TRENDS INVOLVING PROPERTY CRIMES <br /> <br />The reported financial loss to the members of our community from crimes involving burglary and <br />theft for 2003 was $5,941,678. That number exceeds the property losses from all other forms of <br />property crimes in Eugene for 2003. For 2003, the Eugene police department recovered 7.53% <br />of property reported stolen in burglaries and thefts. Although Lane County and law enforcement <br />jurisdictions within Lane County may have different statistical numbers representing their property <br />loss verses their recovery rate, the statistical percentages for recovered property remains very <br />low. <br /> <br />Individuals involved in property crimes frequently sell or trade the stolen property to a variety of <br />sources for cash or drugs. Some common recipients of this stolen property include drug dealers, <br />individual citizens, pawn shops and secondhand dealers. <br /> <br />Upon the examination of secondhand dealer transactions from three local full service secondhand <br />stores during a two-month period, it was discovered that 40.9% of the secondhand transactions <br />were conducted by customers who have prior local arrest histories for property or drug crimes, <br />excluding arson and less than an ounce of marijuana arrests/citations. <br /> <br />Currently, the Eugene Police Department has two full-time property crime investigators and a <br />property crime analyst assigned to regulate approximately 60 secondhand stores, investigate and <br />recover stolen property sold to secondhand stores and process approximately 54,000 secondhand <br />dealer reports. Due to the limited resources available approximately less than half of the all <br />secondhand dealer reports are not processed or compared for matches with stolen property lists. <br /> <br />A PROPOSED SOLUTION TO IMPROVE LAW ENFORCEMENT’S EFFICIENCY <br /> <br />In May of 2002 the City of Eugene began exploring the feasibility of using an automated reporting <br />system for Used Merchandise dealers for the purpose of developing a more efficient way for <br />pawnshops and secondhand dealers to report pawn, consignment and buy transactions to law <br />enforcement. The goal of this project was to develop a more efficient method of collecting and <br /> <br />