New weapon for pawn shops and police

A new software program will allow pawnshops to directly send information to the Albany Police about possible criminals pawning stolen items.

The concept isn't new, officers used to manually collect tickets from the shops and run them through their program and then send those reports to the Georgia Bureau of Investigations. It would take two weeks to a month to process. Now, shops can email information to APD and they can then do background checks on the seller and the merchandise. However, some shop owners say they have to invest more money ino the program because it's not one that is normally offered in their regular software package.

They also think APD should send pawnshops back information on the theft reports so they can know to whom they should discontinue business.