* Pawn shop owners let police peruse their transaction lists whenever asks. Perhaps similar to how cops may look past low level crimes in order to make bigger cases.
* Perhaps akin to police being able to affect traffic stops in areas with high crime, and/or high incidents of DUI's, the police are allowed to look at records as Pawnshops were a known vector for stolen property.
* The police were investigating theft, where a stolen item showed up in a pawn-shop, and were lawfully reviewing the transaction records.
Pawn shop owners (if they're working within the law) do not really get a say -- we upload our records to a provider who pushes transactions to a state nexus center and if they want specific information (or video) from the transactions, we'll get a visit from the state police or a fax from the local police dept.
I can speculate on a few things:
* Pawn shop owners let police peruse their transaction lists whenever asks. Perhaps similar to how cops may look past low level crimes in order to make bigger cases.
* Perhaps akin to police being able to affect traffic stops in areas with high crime, and/or high incidents of DUI's, the police are allowed to look at records as Pawnshops were a known vector for stolen property.
* The police were investigating theft, where a stolen item showed up in a pawn-shop, and were lawfully reviewing the transaction records.