Don’t punish the players who play by the rules

While we don’t want to see this nipped in the bud, there is legitimate concern that a proposal to treat resale shops like pawn shops is too restrictive.

City Councilmember Cathie Gordon is right to be concerned that there have been reports that one or two local resale shops are dealing in stolen goods. But should the legitimate resale shops have to suffer through daily paperwork because of the bad behavior of a couple stores?

We think it’s better to have police investigate the cases of stolen goods rather than penalize the shops that play by the rules.

But we also encourage further discussion of this proposal just to see if there might be a middle ground on this subject.

The bigger question this issue raises is just what is the Police Department doing with the pawnshops that operate here? Are the pawnshops reporting who sold them items and do the pawnshops hold on to the items they take in to see if they were reported stolen?

This writer can speak from experience when his Hamtramck flat was broken into and a number of cameras were stolen.

The items and their serial numbers were reported immediately but the only help from the Police Department was advice to check out a pawn shop located on Jefferson Ave. in Detroit to see if the cameras were there.

This was several years ago and we hope police investigations into stolen goods has ramped up since then. It’s pointless to adopt laws that aren’t going to be enforced in the first place.