What was he thinking?

From Albuquerque, a short piece about how pawn brokers and police interact to catch bad guys.

There’s something new here. We have often cautioned that pawn shops are bad places to sell stolen goods, since we take your name, address, phone number, driver’s license and thumb print; plus each transaction is videotaped.

To heck with Sherlock Holmes examining footprints in the snow.

But, in Albuquerque, there was one thief who pressed his luck even further. If you watch the report, it says  a regular customer at University Pawn snatched a tray of chains and ran out. Then went to a different pawn shop to sell them.

What was he thinking?

The KOAT report mentions a pawn shop network that tracks thefts in Albuquerque and also gives the example of a woman whose ring was stolen who emailed pictures to every pawn shop, resulting in a recovery.

First, you have to have a picture available to email. Second, on Maui, you can use mystolengoods.com, Kamaaina Loan’s exclusive website where crime victims can post information about their losses. That simultaneously alerts both our pawnbrokers and the Maui police, and provides descriptions.

The irony here is that we make it as easy as possible to alert us, and we (helped along by state reporting laws) make it as hard as possible for thieves to fence at pawn shops in general and our Maui pawn shop in particular. Well, that makes it less likely, on the whole, that a recovery will be made through our shop.