Posted Monday, March 15, 2010 -- 5:31pm
By Zac Schultz

Baraboo: Baraboo Police want to implement a new system to help them catch thieves when they sell stolen goods at second hand stores. But the secondhand stores are not happy that they'll end up footing the bill.

Tiffany Opperman spends a good portion of her day paying her customers. As the owner of the Spin Shack, she buys and sells CD's, DVD's and video games.

Every time she buys something, she has to fill out a form. "I take their haircolor, eyecolor, height, weight, their address, phone number."

The form declares the items are not stolen, and the white copy goes to the Baraboo Police Department.

Lt. Rob Sinden says one officer is in charge of a stack of binders full of these forms, including looking through them to see if stolen goods were sold in Baraboo. "It is just a cumbersome project that takes a lot of officer hours off the street when that could be done electronically."

Baraboo would like to go the Automated Pawn System. Instead of filling out a form, Tiffany would enter the information electronically.

Police could search the database themselves, and sometimes the system would tell them when stolen goods were pawned. "The new software has the ability to run each individual serial number against a database and match those up automatically," says Sinden.

The problem is cost. Baraboo wants to charge Tiffany $2 for each customer transaction. "Every time someone walks through my door to sell me items, $2 each time. That can be 10 to 20 people a day."

Tiffany says she can't afford to absorb the cost of the fees and it's definitely not worth it to pass it on to her customers. "If you walked through my door today and wanted to sell me a couple CD's and I said I'll give you $3-$4. With a $2 transaction fee, who's going to take 50 cents for a CD just to suck up that $2 cost."

The city is working with secondhand stores like the Spin Shack to find a compromise on fees.

The City of Madison is working on installing a similar system.