May 13, 2008
HPD’s war on shopping carts
Monday's edition of the Houston Chronicle reported that the Houston Police Department has been moderately successful in their latest venture to stop crime by curbing…shopping cart theft.
Apparently, Grand Theft Shopping Cart is much more of a social problem than we gave could have conceived. According to HPD’s South Central Patrol Division, putting a stop to shopping cart theft is the first step to stopping more serious crimes. And here we thought we should be worried about neglectful parents and violence in the media.
Reportedly costing grocery stores and pharmacies around $100 each, cases of “cart-napping” have increased within the last year or so, with some of the less-than-legit cart pushers doing anything from theft to littering the streets with discarded carts, or from picking up recycled cans to selling the metal for scrap. According to the Chronicle, officers "sign up for cart duty about once a week as a different approach to curbing crime."
"They'll push everything in your yard away in those damn baskets," said Third Ward resident Eugene Archer, who recently cleared a cinderblock building of abandoned carts. "They're pushing Houston away in grocery baskets."
There’s even preventative legislation that we had no idea about:
In the past 12 months, police have stepped up enforcement of a law making it illegal to push a cart down the street without an owner's consent.
Word to the wise…Avoid being pulled over with a rogue shopping cart and keep using them for what they do best: cheap, ridiculous stunts. But please wear helmets.
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Photo by Flickr user Darny.
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Gee, could it possibly be because people on the margins can't afford to drive to the store anymore? It's hard to get all your stuff home by carrying it when you're walking.
The Target near my house has something in their carts that triggers wheel-locks beyond a certain point in the parking lots. There's a painted yellow line and a sign saying the carts won't work beyond the line, as the wheels will lock up. Even then, I still see people attempting to fight the carts beyond the line several times each weekend.
Often, there will be a whole cluster of abandoned carts right at the line, because the would-be "borrowers" were thwarted by the locking wheels.
I think the locking mechanism is brilliant--the carts aren't cheap. Anywhere from $100 to $300 a piece (per NPR). But to cite someone who is obviously living from a cart? Well, I think that's just plain shitty.