Cobb approves changes to pawn shop rules

Cobb commissioners Tuesday voted unanimously to require the county’s pawn shops to upload a digital fingerprint and photograph of every customer to an online database searchable by police nationwide. Critics said the new rules raise privacy issues, but police said the electronic database is a crime-fighting tool because it allows police to search pawn shop transactions across several jurisdictions. Currently, most of Cobb’s 18 pawn shops and 77 precious metals dealers file pawn tickets with customer and item information, which detectives must go in person to review.