SOUTH PORTLAND – A recently opened pawn shop in South Portland began buying and selling firearms this past week, but local police say a new electronic tracking system will help them keep tabs on what comes and goes.
Jimi’s Trading Center was licensed by the city for its location at 650 Main St. on Feb. 21. According to Steve Libby, who manages the shop’s Brewer location, the store opened three weeks ago following 13 years on Congress Street in Portland. Last week, the new site was issued a federal firearms license by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, clearing it to buy and sell guns, which it began doing on April 27.
The license drew the attention of the police department, which says the pawn shop is taking steps to make sure guns do not fall into the wrong hands, and that all items at the shop are not stolen. It also drew the concern of a city councilor, who said the neighborhood might not be the best place for a pawn shop.
James Leonard, 43, of Scarborough, who owns the pawn shop and its sister store in Brewer, says the South Portland location should have 50 to 100 different firearms on hand at any one time.
“We’re not a full-on gun store. I mean, we’re not gun nuts here,” said Leonard, on Monday. “We simply do it because in this day and age it’s one of the best instruments for somebody to get a collateral loan.”
Unlike electronics or collectibles – or even Jimi’s specialty, guitars and musical instruments – firearms retain their value over a long period of time. That makes them an ideal item to pawn when somebody needs cash fast. Apart from gold and silver, guns are Jimi’s biggest item, in terms of both dollars and volume. However, because of their value, real and intrinsic, firearms also are an item that people rarely abandon if they can help it. Even at the 20 to 25 percent interest rates, most people who pawn a gun will pick it up within the 30-day loan period, Leonard said.
“That’s how we like it,” said Leonard. “A lot of what you hear about pawn shops is a bad stereotype. Frankly, we don’t like taking people’s stuff. That’s not the business model.”
According to South Portland Licensing Administrator Jessica Hanscombe, Jimi’s is the only pawn shop in the city. Municipalities don’t track or regulate licenses to sell firearms. The ATF, however, lists three other FFL dealers in South Portland, including Dick’s Sporting Goods, Molan Labe LLC on Schooner Road and Gadget’s Gunshop on Broadway.
Although a number of residents have questioned the advent of a pawn shop and a new outlet for firearms in South Portland, few have been willing to do so publicly. None have said anything to him, says Leonard.
But one person to go on the record is City Councilor Gerard Jalbert. For him, the idea of gun sales in the Thornton Heights neighborhood raises some red flags. Last week, the council declined to sell a vacant lot to the property management firm that runs the Super 8 motel, just a stone’s throw from Jimi’s, because of the high number of police calls to the rooms there, including 68 in 2012 and 37 so far this year.
And, although Jalbert admitted they do get a bad rap – perhaps less so since the advent of TV shows like “Pawn Stars” – a pawn shop still carries a certain stigma.
“There’s the motel with hundreds of units rented as apartments, a payday loan company in the area, and a gas station nearby that sells hard liquor. Now with a pawn shop, it all adds up to a declining neighborhood,” said Jalbert. “It’s not the kind of development I want to see as a city councilor.”
“I would say, absolutely, Councilor Jalbert is on to something,” said Chief Ed Googins on Tuesday. “We are daily confronted with calls for service in that area which indicate to us it is in decline. Taking any particular business singularly, I would not paint that picture, but in the totality, partly from the transient apartments in that area, what we are seeing is a community in constant conflict.”
The area has an inordinately large number of disturbance calls, what Googins calls, “people not getting along with other people.”
“The dynamic that exists up there right now, I don’t think it’s good,” said Googins. “Things don’t seem to have gone well there for the last year or so.”
Mayor Tom Blake doesn’t seem to hold Jalbert’s opinion.
“We are open for business,” he said. “What’s most important is that they run a clean, reputable business and that they go by the law.”
Keeping track
Among the federal firearm license requirements are that dealers conduct a background check of all buyers and that it hold every firearm for 10 days before reselling. That gives the federal government time to make sure the weapon hasn’t been stolen or used in a crime.
“We’re not a lemonade stand,” said Leonard. “People can’t just walk in here and buy a gun like that. And, they are all locked up and secured when we leave for the night.”
But perhaps more importantly, from the city’s point of view, Leonard volunteered to take part in a pilot program launched two months ago by the South Portland Police Department. Of 20 businesses in the city that sell secondhand items, four are now filing records of their transactions electronically with police every 48 hours, says a department spokesman, Lt. Frank Clark. Leonard says his shop is actually uploading data daily.
That information on what stores buy and who they buy it from is distributed on to the New England State Police Information Network, Clark said.
“Why that’s a big deal is that, historically, we got information from secondhand dealers on reams of paper,” said Clark. “Obviously, it takes time and resources to put all that into a useable format detectives can use to investigate cases.
“Now, we actually have access to those transaction records almost immediately, as do law enforcement officers from across New England,” said Clark, noting that the system has been used to crack two cases already. “So, South Portland is probably not the ideal place to come to if you want to unload stolen items, even if you do succeed in pawning it, we’re going to know who you are within 24 hours and we’ll be able to backtrack to begin building a case.”
And the information sharing goes both ways, with police often advising places like Jimi’s of people to be on the watch for, Clark said.
“We get a list and sometimes we help them catch the bad guys even before the try and sell us something,” said Leonard. “A pawn shop just really is not a place to take stolen property. We are under a lot more regulation and stipulation that any other second-hand dealers.”
And, Jimi’s sells a lot of guns, too. By Monday afternoon, the Brewer shop has sent out for seven background checks that day alone.
“Just the fact that people know where firearms are is a concern, of course, from security and storage standpoint,” said Clark, “but the fact that they are a pawn shop selling guns is not a concern. Our concern obviously is any gun getting into the hands of the wrong people. As a federal firearms licensee, they have to do everything in compliance with federal law. It’s a business that has gone through a process.”
“It’s always concerning when guns are sold,” said Googins, “but they [Jimi’s] perform background checks, they are a federally licensed dealer. They are regulated to to do what they do, as opposed to some other types of sales that are not require to do all that.”
“I suppose that is true,” said Jalbert. “After all, if someone is going to buy or sell a gun, better it happens in some place like this than in a back alley.”
James Leonard of Scarborough in his pawn shop, Jimi’s Trading Center, at 650 Main St. in South Portland, which recently moved after 13 years on Congress Street in Portland. Last week, Leonard successfully transferred a federal license from his Brewer location, allowing him to begin selling firearms in South Portland.
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