THE PAWN DETAIL : Match Game Frustrates Officers

Arthur L. (Larry) Kagele enjoys solving puzzles in his off-hours.

It is the ones he tries to put together on the job that often make him want to tear out his hair.

Kagele is among six detectives assigned to the Los Angeles Police Department’s Pawn Detail, which regulates the city’s 63 licensed pawnbrokers and more than 2,500 second-hand stores and antique dealers. One need look no further than Kagele’s desk at Parker Center to understand the frustrations of his job.

On one side are stacked hundreds of burglary and theft reports taken citywide. On the other is a plastic shopping bag stuffed with hundreds of pawn tickets that Kagele picks up daily from the half-dozen shops he patrols.

For hours, Kagele thumbs through the theft reports, then the pawn tickets, trying to match items stolen with items hocked. To their credit, Kagele and others assigned to the squad last year recovered more than $1 million in stolen property.

Their mind-numbing task, however, is rarely fruitful: Fewer than one out of every 100 pawn tickets Kagele studies yields a stolen item.

“There are thousands of pieces of jewelry out there, hundreds of televisions,” he said, “and all these people calling wanting to know if we’ve found their things yet.”

Not all the work is by hand. Identification numbers of stolen and pawned items are fed each day into computers in hopes of matching them. The problem, Kagele said, is that most victims never bother to put personal identification numbers on their possessions, so a computer is useless in the majority of cases.

The typical theft reports describing a missing “20-inch television set” or “10-speed bicycle” get little more than a quick glance before landing in Kagele’s trash can.

Kagele tries to concentrate on the unusual items.

“There was a guy in a wheelchair once and I got him back the pendant that belonged to his father,” he said proudly. “There were tears in his eyes. It was very satisfying.”

To some, the way Kagele and others in the Pawn Detail earn their paychecks may seem a waste of time and resources, particularly in a city where officers are hard pressed to investigate homicides, rapes and drugs. Other departments, including the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department, have “civilianized” their pawn enforcement squads.

Kagele and others, however, said police officers are needed to deter the minority of pawnshop operators who, if left to their own devices, would traffic in stolen goods.

“If I had 10 more people,” said Kagele’s boss, Detective Mark R. Myrdahl, “I could find 10 times as much stolen stuff. But we’re not going to get 10 more people. The department doesn’t have them.”

Myrdahl said his detail is augmented by a retired detective who voluntarily comes in weekly to help sort through the reams of pawn tickets and theft reports.

The pawn detail detectives are also responsible for policing the city’s 2,575 second-hand stores, used-jewelry dealers, antique shops, junk collectors, junk dealers and used-book stores, any of which can be outlets for stolen goods.

But they rarely have the time.

“Where would you start?” Myrdahl said. “All we’re doing is shoveling sand against the sea.”