Second-hand stores, pawns unhappy as council to vote on new city rules

Stores would no longer be able to pay cash and must photograph entire inventory.

Conflicts over a new process for tracking second hand sales in La Crosse are likely to be part of discussions tonight at a La Crosse city council meeting.  

La Crosse police want to put in place a much more comprehensive system that, among other things, catalogs all second-hand dealer inventory with pictures.

It’s something that could be a big issue for the two dozen or so small dealers at the Antique Center in downtown La Crosse. 

“There’s got to be a solution somewhere here,” Police chief Ron Tischer said. “Personally, I don’t know what it is right now. When we look at this, it is the most efficient way to document the buying and selling of items.”

The proposal would also prohibit dealers from paying for anything in cash.

Some dealers aren’t happy with the proposed rules, complaining they would be too onerous.  

“The police department spends thousands of hours, if not tens of thousands of hours, investigating crimes where people steal stuff and go on to sell it,” Tischer said.

Those antique stores see the exhaustive digital picture inventory requirement as possibly taking thousands of hours. Tischer, however, doesn’t want different sets of rules for certain stores.

“If you don’t include those stores, then people will start going to those stores to sell their stolen items or items they shouldn’t be selling,” Tischer said. “The problem is, just like every other ordinance or state statute, the bad stores or the bad people ruin it for everybody else.”

Recently, La Crosse police busted two men who have been stealing items from garages and possibly selling them to second-hand stores and pawn shops in the area. The police had four truckloads and two vans full of stolen items taken from at least 20 garage heists in town in the last five weeks.