Peddlers permit

I have nothing against peddlers. Door-to-door sales is a tough way to make a buck, and requires some real gumption. But some peddlers (or at least some criminals posing as peddlers) use the role to take advantage of criminal opportunities. Every year, we investigated burglaries and thefts by door-to-door canvassers. A couple of cases last week were typical. When you think about it, it's pretty obvious: a peddler walking around a residential neighborhood knocking on doors finds out who's home and who's not and can essentially case the block pretty carefully before letting himself in a lightly secured door. We get a fair number of calls like this:


Probably because of this risk, Lincoln, like most cities, requires peddlers to obtain a permit, and the application includes a criminal record check at the police department. You are ineligible for a permit if you've been convicted of a felony or a crime of moral turpitude in the past 10 years. We're processing quite a few of these right now--60 in the past 30 days. We probably have a few hundred peddler permits (which are valid for one year) out there right now, with peddlers hawking fruit, cable TV and phone service, lawn care, siding, magazines, cleaning supplies, and vacuum cleaners.

Many permits are denied based on our record check which reveals disqualifying convictions. But I have no doubt many slip through, because of the nature of criminal records. Contrary to popular belief, there is no computer system into which you can enter a name and obtain a complete and accurate nationwide criminal history. That's a myth. Most criminal history records are local, and the State and national repositories are not complete. Moreover, juvenile records are never included in these repositories.

I am particularly concerned with what we know about out-of-town peddlers. During the summer, crews are recruited by companies that shuffle young people around the country flooding residential neighborhoods selling wares--most commonly magazines. We'll have a group of six or eight in our lobby sometimes, and the oldest in the bunch will be 20. They are from all over the United States, so a check of our rather detailed and complete local records is pretty worthless. A Nebraska criminal history is better, but probably not a great improvement if the applicant is from, say, North Carolina. We can't run a national criminal history, but even if we could, it would be unlikely to help much--if any of these people have a criminal past, it would likely be for misdemeanor crimes, or processed in juvenile courts. We have no idea whether they are hard-working students trying to make tuition on summer break, or deadbeats who've skipped their own town for greener pastures.

We also have a problem with peddlers who do not get permits at all. Sometimes these companies and their peddlers are willing to run the risk that they'll get some 19 year old thrown in jail for peddling without a permit. They bond him out for $50 and move on. The permit costs $25, so it's a calculated risk. The defendant skips town, a warrant is issued, but believe it or not Nebraska is not going to extradite someone from Las Vegas to face to music on a misdemeanor back in Lincoln. So far this year, we've arrested 29 people for peddling without a permit. Here's the locations of those cases:


The lean to the northwest is probably due to proximity to the Interstate. The defendants come from 17 states. Only four are from Nebraska. Only four cases have resulted in the defendant actually showing up in court. The remainder have gone to warrant, or are pending right now--waiting for the defendant to fail to appear and the warrant to be issued.

Of the four that have been through court, the defendants were fined $25, $100, $150, and $250. The higher fines were all in the same group. One of these three had applied for a permit and been denied based on a felony conviction, but peddled anyway. The second didn't apply because she knew she'd be denied, and the third was a level 3 high risk registered sex offender. This group was selling Kirby vacuum cleaners. You'd be a little surprised, I suppose, to learn that the guy in your living room sweeping up the sample confetti was a sex offender.