WESTMINSTER, Colo.—There might be no such thing as an area totally free of crime, but a former Broomfield police officer has created a safer spot for those looking to do business with someone they don’t know.
Anyone who’s ever felt a little leery about meeting someone to buy a car or a dog or anything else they’ve found online or in the newspaper might be interested in The Safer Spot—a business offering a safe place for strangers to meet, have their transactions documented and receive a number of other services.
The business is the brainchild of Dan Prochoda, a 15-year police veteran who’s seen plenty of fraud during his time in blue. With stints as a patrol officer, civil officer and SWAT team leader, Prochoda knows firsthand how nerve-racking it can be for people to sell to or buy something from someone they’ve never met.
“I was nervous in those situations myself,” he said. “Here I am, a law enforcement officer—I have access to guns, I have access to training and still I was uncomfortable.”
The inspiration point, though, came when Prochoda was considering selling a pair of old revolvers. He didn’t want to list the guns with a dealer who would take a sizable slice of the profit, but he didn’t want to sell them to someone who couldn’t meet licensing requirements, either.
“I thought it would be great if you could go somewhere and get the federal background check they do at the gun shops,” Prochoda said. “The more I thought about it, the more I thought that sounds like an idea for a business.”
That business is about to come to fruition. Prochoda plans to open the doors to his Westminster location later this month. The offices will offer private rooms to transact business, generic forms for sales and transactions, gun sale background checks, notarization, anonymous sales and document archiving—all for a flat fee.
Prochoda hasn’t finalized his prices yet, but he expects most services will cost less than $50.
Meeting face-to-face can prevent fraud in some cases and having a second party to Internet and newspaper sales also is wise, said Nate Strauch, spokesman for the Colorado Attorney General’s Office. But consumers also need to be wary of too-good-to-be-true offers.
“Certainly some percentage of fraud can be prevented by a second party,” he said. “What we see more often is that people get an offer that blows them away, they act without fully thinking and they end up losing a great deal of money.”
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Safer Spot:
