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OTTUMWA, IOWA -- For Thursday's Facebook story of the day, you voted to know more about the rules regarding the legality of items pawned or sold in pawn shops.

In Ottumwa, the process begins at City Hall where the shop owner must purchase a lisence with the City Clerk.

"A potential licensee will come here, and we will issue the lisence to them," Ottumwa City Clerk Amanda Valent said. "From there, they must issue a daily report on the items sold, and that goes through the police department."

That report includes what items have been purchased, from whom, the seller's date of birth and any serial numbers on the products.

"Those papers first go to our records department and they run them through the database to determine if they're stolen or not," Officer Rueben Ross said. "If they are, then obviously, we start an investigation."

If the items are not flagged as stolen, they are still put into a database, where they can be tracked for future reported robberies or stolen items. The investigation into the items is important, as it is not always the seller or shop owner at fault.

"A lot of times by the time it hits the pawn shop, it may have changed hands three or four times," Officer Ross said. "The person who actually pawned or sold it might not have even committed a crime, they may have legitimately purchased it, but we obviously seize it and then do an investigation."

Ross said the items most often flagged as stolen are gaming systems and tools.

Lynns Pawn Shop in downtown Ottumwa was shut down for repeated infractions.