If you decide to take up burgling people's houses as a lifestyle choice, you will someday need to find a way of disposing of your loot. Cash is simple, but other stuff can be difficult. Things are so cheap these days that a telly that would have fetched £100 in the pub ten years ago can now be bought for that on the Internet.
There is always Cash Converters, a 21st century pawnbrokers-cum-money shop that is run on spotless lines, that would have appealed to Fagin.
The chap we saw today was a regular client of CashConverters, which is where he disposed of much of his stuff. The firm takes the precaution of requiring ID from its downmarket client base, and in addition takes a full face photograph of each of them, as well as snaps of the pledged valuables.
So the stolen stuff was traced to our man, and his mugshot matched the police database. Hardly Sherlock Holmes is it?
If they were clever they wouldn't be our 'customers'.
ReplyDeleteI believe Retail stores often keep mugshots of prolific, known Shoplifters in order to swiftly recognise and remove them should they return, the way iirc the Pub Link system keeps information and cctv footage or photo's of people banned from the entire town's pubs and clubs for drink/pub related crime
ReplyDeleteIt would seem reasonable to me that either the Police when a Shoplifter or Thief is prosecuted give all their local shops such as Cash generators and Cash Converters, the name etc so that should they ever attempt to sell again the store will know the stuff is almost certainly hooky, and could perhaps even then telephone the Police to inform them of the incident, and grab the offender whilst still wandering town with his or her ill gotten gains.Create a blacklist operating in these shops. Maybe even make it a low key offence for a Store to knowingly purchase from a person they know to be a shoplifter/thief.
"Maybe even make it a low key offence for a Store to knowingly purchase from a person they know to be a shoplifter/thief.". That means if someone was a thief at some point they will not be able to sell something that is theirs legitimately.
DeleteIt's already an offence for anyone, shop or otherwise, to buy something they believe might have been stolen. It's called handling.
It doesn't stop Cash Converters et al from constantly handling stolen goods though, but as long as their corporate backside is covered, that's fine.
ReplyDelete