Erie County Legislators are struggling to come up with legislation to deal with the stolen merchandise in pawn shop problem, criminals fencing stolen property to come up with cash and these days that's increasingly for heroin.
Legislators were close to passing a Local Law early this year to deal with pawn but it was pulled back at the last minute because of problems, especially from pawn shops concerned about some of the rules for putting inventories online.
Legislature Majority Leader Joseph Lorigo says there's a new version in the works which he expects to pass before the end of the year. Lorigo says there were Constitutional issues in police going on line to look into store inventories.
"It allowed police agencies to look at the inventory of these shops without a warrant," says Lorigo. "That's an illegal search under the Fourth Amendment. So, that requirement has now been taken out. There will not be an electronic reporting requirement. They will have to keep records for two weeks and the police are going to have to do their police work and go and look for whatever type of stolen goods they might be looking for."
That means police will still have to go from shop to shop across the county looking for pawned merchandise. Lorigo says it's a growing problem because of the thefts to support drug habits. He says it's a problem across the county, not just in the city but also in suburbs like his West Seneca and into the county's rural corners.
