By Alexandra Alper
The hit reality TV series, “Pawn Stars,” opens with images of an antique watch, a sword, and a dramatic shot of three men in black.
The show, which premiered last year on the History Channel, has done much to legitimize and even glamorize a business once seen as a front for robbers unloading their goods.
In a newly gentrifying area of Brooklyn, however, a controversy is simmering over the opening of a pawn shop shows that old perceptions die hard. “The Community Pawn Shop” is scheduled to open next week in Crown Heights, in the face of significant opposition from residents.
“It’s really embarrassing for a neighborhood to have something like this, especially one that is working this hard to revitalize itself and support small businesses,” said Dori Kornfeld, Crown Heights resident and member of the Crow Hill Association, a civic action group that is trying to stop the opening of the pawn shop on Park Place and Franklin Avenue.
Echoing the views of the handful of residents who protested in front of the shop two weeks ago, Kornfeld said that pawn shops increase property crime by giving thieves a nearby venue to exchange goods for cash. She also said that high interest rates exploit low-income borrowers.
Eugene Josovits, 40, owner of the new pawn shop, rejects the criticisms as old stereotypes. He says that pawn shops provide loans to the “unbanked”—people with poor credit history or no bank account—and that he helps the police solve crimes through a nationwide database to identify stolen pawned items.
“These people have the wrong idea [about pawn shops],” said Josovits, who came by Saturday to watch 30 or so protesters chant “no pawn shop” across from his store. “They think it is a fence where everyone goes to rob and bring things there,” he said. “Maybe in the 70’s and 80’s, but today it’s a legitimate business, a financial center.”
When someone needs cash, they bring jewelry or electronics to one of Josovits’s three area stores, where he gives them a four-month cash loan at about 20% interest, in keeping with state law. The vast majority of customers pay the interest and collect the pawned item, he says. Only about one in five customers forfeit the item, making it available for retail sale by the pawn shop.
Josovits says he has no incentive to sell to thieves. “There is plenty of legit business out there,” he said. “Why would you want to buy something stolen and then give it back to the cops?”
Officer Lighton Myrie, of the 77th Precinct, agreed. Pawn shops, he said, “survive off the interest from repeat customers.” Still, he says, “I look at where pawn shops are located, and a lot of high crime places have a pawn shop across the street.”
Police visit all twelve Crown Heights-based pawn shops monthly to check recent transactions with reported thefts. A pawnbroker is penalized if he operates without a license, or is caught with a series of stolen goods.
There are 304 pawn shops in New York City, 54 in Brooklyn, and 13,500 nationwide. The number of New York City pawn shop licenses granted last year was more than twice the number for 2005, according to the City Department of Customer Affairs (DCA).
According to the National Pawn Brokers Association, less than one tenth of 1 percent of pawns involve stolen goods.
Josovits, who has been in the business since 2001, has stores in Bed-Stuy, Canarsie, and East New York. He signed up voluntarily for Leads Online, an Internet database that allows detectives to check barcodes and descriptions of stolen goods with pawned merchandise nationwide. According to DCA, Josovits has only two violations, for not providing a pawn stub and for failing to include a store’s license number in an ad.
Erica McCue, an employee at his Bed-Stuy Community Pawnbroker store, bought gold jewelry from an undercover policeman who claims he told her it was stolen, the New York Post reports. Josovits denies the officer said it was stolen. The police’s internal affairs board is investigating, according to the Post.
Josovits found the Crown Heights location for $1,500 a month. He has made $100,000 in improvements, since signing the 25-year lease, so he will not easily be persuaded to leave.
“I’m hoping these people accept it in the next couple of months,” Josovits said. “Everything will vent out and then they’ll see that the business is run legit and they’ll just come and use it.”
The protesters were not assuaged. “Having lived through the ‘80’s and the crack epidemic and the proliferation of pawn shops that would spring up in communities that were struggling, mostly as a way for people who are doing criminal activities to fence the good that they stole,” said Patrice Elliot, a finance manager at the protest, “There is nothing [the owner] could do to change my mind.”
The opposition began to form in August.
The Crow Hill Association organized a spontaneous protest in September, calling attention to the large, brightly colored sign, which read “Pawn Shop, Cash Loans, We Buy Electronics.”
Josovits took it down.
“They said it was a big eye sore,” said Josovits. “I was trying to work with them. I met with them and they said, “welcome to the community. I thought it was over.” But the protests continued.
Signs at the recent protest read, “the Pawn shop is illegal,” in reference to the Association’s recent discovery that the mixed business-residential zoning prohibits pawn shops. Josovits says he will talk to his lawyer.
While the signs reflect the zoning issue, many of the arguments are ideological. “[Pawns] are really predatory loans which do nothing to create wealth or help people get anywhere,” said Kornfeld.
Josovits claims he helps the community. “If you walk into a bank today and tell a teller you need 1,000 dollars…and you have no credit, no bank account, no nothing,” said Josovits. “Where are you going to go?”
But the protesters—50 percent of whom were white, in a neighborhood that is almost 75 percent black–aren’t Josovits’s most likely customers. Franklin Avenue borders the more upscale Prospect Heights neighborhood, and is slowly gentrifying. While crime is still high—at least one murder on or adjacent to Franklin Avenue in Crown Heights has occurred each year since 2003—gourmet coffee shops and organic food markets are cropping up. Eight-unit brownstones wedged between African Hair braiding shops and liquor stores are selling for a million dollars, and educated, white 20-somethings in skinny jeans and plaid shirts are almost as numerous as blacks.
“They are trying to make this [street] yuppy, but there are still shootings here, there is still crime, and there is a police tower over at Lincoln Place,” said Josovits.
Officer Myrie agreed, arguing the community is more concerned with the pawn shop image than with the increase in crime it might provoke. “A lot of these people are opposed to it because they have seen the community at its worst,” he said. “It is up and coming, with new stores, and new businesses. I’m partial to their sentiments.”
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