Item 4: Ordinance Concerning Used Merchandise Dealers

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ATTACHMENT B PROPOSED USED MERCHANDISE DEALERS ORDINANCE INFORMATION SHEET February 2006 This information sheet has been prepared to outline several of the current trends involving property crimes as they relate to used merchandise dealers, the current limitations and a proposed solution for local law enforcement jurisdictions to regulate used merchandise dealers. In addition, some of the concerns expressed by used merchandise dealers regarding the proposed implementation of the amended Used Merchandise Dealer Ordinance and automated reporting are also included. CURRENT TRENDS INVOLVING PROPERTY CRIMES The reported financial loss to the members of our community from crimes involving burglary and theft for 2003 was $5,941,678. That number exceeds the property losses from all other forms of property crimes in Eugene for 2003. For 2003, the Eugene police department recovered 7.53% of property reported stolen in burglaries and thefts. Although Lane County and law enforcement jurisdictions within Lane County may have different statistical numbers representing their property loss verses their recovery rate, the statistical percentages for recovered property remains very low. Individuals involved in property crimes frequently sell or trade the stolen property to a variety of sources for cash or drugs. Some common recipients of this stolen property include drug dealers, individual citizens, pawn shops and secondhand dealers. Upon the examination of secondhand dealer transactions from three local full service secondhand stores during a two-month period, it was discovered that 40.9% of the secondhand transactions were conducted by customers who have prior local arrest histories for property or drug crimes, excluding arson and less than an ounce of marijuana arrests/citations. Currently, the Eugene Police Department has two full-time property crime investigators and a property crime analyst assigned to regulate approximately 60 secondhand stores, investigate and recover stolen property sold to secondhand stores and process approximately 54,000 secondhand dealer reports. Due to the limited resources available approximately less than half of the all secondhand dealer reports are not processed or compared for matches with stolen property lists. A PROPOSED SOLUTION TO IMPROVE LAW ENFORCEMENT’S EFFICIENCY In May of 2002, the city of Eugene began to explore the feasibility of using an automated reporting system for Used Merchandise dealers for the purpose of developing a more efficient method for pawnshops and secondhand dealers to report pawn, consignment, and buy transactions to law enforcement. The goals of this project were to develop a more efficient method of collecting and disseminating pawn, consignment, and buy information; to develop a more efficient method of comparing reported stolen property lists with pawned, consigned, or