Proposed Rules for Pawnshops Worry Owners

Standing in his store full of worn guitars, gold pocket watches and sapphire-studded class rings, Canoga Park pawnshop owner Stanley Ward decried new attempts Thursday to regulate his business.

“We are a legitimate business (and) are being persecuted,” he said. “We are not second-class citizens, and shouldn’t be treated as such.”

In what he called an effort to discourage trafficking in stolen property, City Councilman Nate Holden has proposed new regulations, including limitations on hours and a citywide ban on drive-up windows.

“A large number of stolen items . . . end up in a pawnshop,” Holden said. But if the city can’t regulate all aspects of the business, “we can control the operating hours,” he said.

Ward, whose shop closes at 5:30 p.m., was among the owners who called the proposal harassment.

Others said it was an idea worth trying.

“I don’t see why they should be open when we have bank machines 24 hours,” said Sergio Moraga, who owns a shop down the street from Ward’s.

Holden has asked the city attorney’s office to draw up plans within 60 days to limit pawnshop operations and hours, though he said he didn’t know yet what those hours might be.

The shops are magnets for ne’er-do-wells, he said, and if the business is legitimate, there is no need to be open at 3 a.m. or to swap goods for cash through a window.

“They are not under control,” Holden said of the businesses.

A criminal can commit “burglaries (in the middle of the night) and then turn around and sell the stuff in the same minute.”

To many owners, Holden’s proposal is yet the latest attack on a business that continues to be punished for problems--such as fencing stolen goods--that were cleaned up decades ago.

Even Moraga, who liked the idea of limiting hours, said, “We have more regulations than any other (business).”

Said Ward, “Pawnshops today are not like the ‘The Pawnbroker,’ with Rod Steiger. We’re as concerned about crime as the LAPD.”

On his counter is an ink pad for the thumbprint he must take from every person from whom he accepts goods.

Beneath his counter are the receipts that require everything from a customer’s driver’s license number to his hair and eye color to be listed.

And the slips are sent every morning to the LAPD’s pawn detail.

Ward said the pawn business “is as clean as the furniture business (in which he spent some 40 years); as legitimate as the restaurant across the street.”