Company protests APM ban; denies tech kiosks are a ‘draw for thieves’

Are Automated Purchasing Machines crime-inducing thief magnets, or environmentally friendly e-waste recyclers?

Depends upon whom you ask – such as city officials who are considering banning them, or the attorneys of the company that operates and distributes them.

If one were to have asked the Sonoma City Council at its Feb. 18 meeting, town officials would have leaned toward the former, given that the council voted 5-0 to move forward with an ordinance to prohibit the cash-for-tech kiosks within the city limits.

The council was acting on the advice of city staff, which issued a report saying the free-standing cash points – which enable the sale of cell phones, mp3 players and other tech devices for immediate cash – encourage theft, potentially turning a Wine Country destination into a Crime Country destination.

“Law enforcement agencies across the country cite the instant access to cash provided by APMs as a draw for thieves,” read the staff report.

While no Automated Purchasing Machines are currently in use in Sonoma, the staff recommendation was to proceed with the ordinance before any became established.

But the city’s pre-emptive strike against Automated Purchasing Machines may have been, well, a little too pre-emptive – at least according to spokespeople from APM manufacturer EcoATM, which has an application with the city to place one of its kiosks in the local Safeway.

EcoATM representatives Bonnie Garcia and Max Santiago appeared before the council at its March 2 meeting, asking city officials to reconsider any prohibitions against APMs on the grounds of environmentalism.

“We are focused on e-waste,” Garcia said. “Four-hundred-million devices sit in people’s drawers, and they end up in landfill.”

She said APMs take a “significant step toward solving the e-waste problem.”

EcoATM currently has kiosks in nearly 1,900 locations across the country, operating in 92 cities in California – the company says it only places the kiosks at “high traffic locations in malls and large national retail chain stores.” Their APMs can be found locally in Marin, Solano, San Francisco, Alameda and Contra Costa counties.

The San Diego-based company – a subsidiary of Outerwall Inc., which operates Coinstar and Redbox kiosks at various retail outlets – claims to have collected more than four million electronic devices since launching in 2008. The company sells the devices back to companies such as Apple, AT&T and Gamestop, who reuse the materials.

The APM issue initially came up last year when local law enforcement officials urged the City Council to pass an ordinance prohibiting the machines; such a move requires an amendment to the city development code. The council passed a temporary moratorium on the machines in October, while city staff developed an amendment.

But Santiago, director of law enforcement relations for EcoATM, implored the council to reconsider.

“Not a single phone stolen in Sonoma has ever been sold to an EcoATM,” said Santiago, explaining that each transaction is monitored by a live operator at the company’s San Diego headquarters who checks a stolen-item database and denies any transactions of devices on the database. The machines also capture an image of the seller and collect fingerprints which, in case of a theft, are available to law-enforcement officers without a subpoena, EcoATM officials say. “EcoATM is the worst place for a criminal to sell an electronic device,” according to the company.

In case the council couldn’t be persuaded to reconsider the ban on environmental grounds, EcoATM’s chief legal officer David Mersten sent city officials a letter describing the city’s staff report as “inaccurate and outdated” and alleged that, since no other company operates APM kiosks, the proposed ban is “targeted solely at EcoATM.”

The letter also alleges that the “ill-conceived” ban is a violation of the company’s rights as a secondhand dealer under state law.

In a 5-0 vote at the March 2 meeting, the city council decided to table consideration of the ordinance for a later date.