DON'T SHACKLE LEGITIMATE BUSINESSES TO FIGHT PROPERTY
CRIME

Property crime is a plague in Vancouver. Thousands of homes and cars
are broken into every year, often by drug addicts.

They don't want the stuff they steal, they want to convert it quickly
into money to feed their addiction.

So police and city council have rightly concluded that making it more
difficult for thieves to turn their loot into cash is an important
part of fighting property crime.

But helping police fight crime cannot be the only issue council
considers when drafting bylaws. It also has to allow legitimate
businesses to operate without being strangled by red tape.

The recent announcement by Cheapskates that it is closing its three
retail outlets that sell used sporting goods on consignment because
it cannot afford to meet stringent new regulations shows council has
cast too wide a net in its otherwise worthy effort to catch thieves.

For the past 19 years, Cheapskates has been a viable business and a
great asset for parents faced with the need to provide expensive
sports equipment for children who will quickly outgrow it.

It's also part of the second-hand goods industry that performs the
valuable function of finding a new home for unwanted merchandise that
might otherwise end up in a landfill.

In numerous sting operations, however, police have shown that too
many retail outlets are willing to buy and sell used goods with no
questions asked.

By all accounts, including those from Vancouver police, Cheapskates
is not one of those businesses. Far from it.

Cheapskates takes goods on consignment, then insists on mailing out
cheques when the used equipment is sold. So they have the address of
everyone who brings them merchandise for sale.

But now they have run afoul of the requirement instituted in 2002
that all goods have to be kept 35 days before being sold.

The purpose of the delay is to allow victims of theft enough time to
report their losses before they can be fenced to a store and sold to
some unsuspecting customer.

Cheapskates complains that the delay is too long, that it creates
unaffordable storage costs and it can erode the value of the kind of
seasonal merchandise they sell.

They also complain that the recently imposed requirement that the
consignor's personal data, including his or her eye and hair colour,
height, weight and race, be recorded along with their name and
address is an unreasonable intrusion of privacy and an unacceptable
burden for the store.

Numerous people in the Lower Mainland have written to council and to
the media to praise the service Cheapskates offers.

Vancouver councillors quite reasonably argue that they can't have one
set of rules for stores such as Cheapskates and another for what they
suspect are less virtuous retailers.

But it appears that if the safeguards already taken by Cheapskates
were universally applied to the second-hand trade it would go a long
way towards shutting down the market for stolen goods.

Now that the police have an electronic reporting system that allows
the serial numbers of goods offered for sale to be compared against
goods reported stolen, the 35-day holdback seems needlessly onerous
- -- especially when stores have the name and address of the seller.

Cheapskates has also offered to take a digital photograph of sellers,
which seems to be a more than reasonable replacement for the other
personal data the bylaw requires.

The city bylaw should encourage retailers like Cheapskates, not make
them jump through pointless hoops. Otherwise, they will be replaced
by markets that are much harder to police, including the growing
number of Internet sites where provenance is rarely certain.

There are many ways to fight property crime without unfairly
shackling legitimate business. like Cheapskates.