Common Sense Legislation To Hold Secondhand Merchandise Dealers Accountable

The City Council is expected to vote on Tuesday on an ordinance that would make it harder for secondhand dealers to acquire, and ultimately sell, stolen goods.

The Legislation & Permits Committee will debate the ordinance at its meeting Monday.

If passed, the ordinance will require local retailers who purchase certain goods for resale – including precious metals, jewelry, coins, electronics, expensive sports memorabilia and other goods – to more strictly record each transaction (including with photos) and enter those purchases online through the police department’s NEWPRS computer system. NEWPRS allows police to more easily track stolen goods that thieves may try to resell for some quick cash.

The ordinance also requires secondhand dealers to hold all impacted items for seven days before reselling them – further protecting theft victims.

Now, is the reselling of stolen goods a widspread problem in South Milwaukee? There is no evidence it is. But that doesn’t mean the council shouldn’t be proactive in making sure that victims of burglary and theft in South Milwaukee are protected. This ordinance does so, while not putting unreasonable burdens on secondhand sellers.

The ordinance also exempts those reselling goods for charity, rummage sales and other instances outside the traditional secondhand retail environment.

It also is a big improvement from a first draft of the ordinance – a version some other communities like Greenfield have adopted – which would have put the restrictions on many more types of items, imposed a per-transaction fee on retailers dealing in the impacted goods and required retailers to enter all transactions into NEWPRS within 24 hours (vs. the adopted 48).

Those types of restrictions are unreasonable and could be chilling to current and potential businesses in South Milwaukee. This version goes just far enough.

I’ll keep you posted.