Comments on: Punish the Victims

By: Poster

Poster — Fri, 21 Apr 2006 11:05:43 +0000

The real answer, of course, is not legal at all, but rather moral. If citizens were *sooo* concerned about seeing shopping carts in weird areas, why don’t they return them to the grocery store, Wal-Mart or wherever? It takes a few minutes out of their lives. But they can’t be bothered. Instead, it’s the “let’s pass more laws so other people can deal with it” non-solution.

By: aj

aj — Wed, 19 Apr 2006 18:52:13 +0000

I suspect what the politicians really want, is for supermarkets to volunteer to periodically send somebody around to pick up their carts from nearby apartment complexes. Since they won’t volunteer until they are forced to…

By: wavemaker

wavemaker — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 20:41:42 +0000

Since it is obvious that the perpetrators of this plague are homeless people and drunk college students, we can solve this problem by licensing shopping carts and zoning college-friendly bars out of commercial districts.

By: Walter E. Wallis

Walter E. Wallis — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 17:03:26 +0000

Arrest anyone off site with a shopping cart unless they have written permission. People can buy carts and wagons to take groceries home. Stores could have rental carts, or even runners to accompany carts home and return them for a price.

By: Don Keefhardt

Don Keefhardt — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:24:14 +0000

When shopping carts are outlawed, only outlaws will have shopping carts.

By: David

David — Tue, 18 Apr 2006 15:12:06 +0000

TC: The laws are ineffective because it is impractical to catch the person littering when all you have is an abandoned grocery cart. The city has a perfectly reasonable and legitimate interest in trying to find some way to prevent shopping carts from being abandoned (littered). Laws preventing littering help, but clearly aren't working, because shopping carts are still being stolen and left places.

It makes sense to look for other ways of solving the problem.

Unfortunately, I think this is a bit of an unfair burden to place on the stores. Since this is, in fact, a public policy issue, perhaps tax revenues could subsidize the anti-theft measures the stores ultimately decide to use?

By: markm

markm — Mon, 17 Apr 2006 13:05:44 +0000

Dearieme: There must be a electronic cable buried under that red line, at a cost of thousands, more likely tens of thousands, even in pounds. Unless the rate of theft becomes unreasonable, it's less costly to replace a few carts, probably even a few hundred carts.

Also, it might not stop the thefts. While I haven't seen one of these carts, I suspect I could disable the brakes in a few seconds. I hope I am more knowledgeable and resourceful than the average homeless person, but once one of them figures it out, the others may learn from them.

By: dearieme

dearieme — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 22:42:17 +0000

One local store has carts (“trolleys” in Britain)whose wheels lock if you push them past a Red Line.

By: Jody

Jody — Thu, 13 Apr 2006 18:55:56 +0000

It's really the same logic as is being used in the lawsuits against the gun manufacturers (Person X uses product Y in a way not intended by manufacturer A. Since A made Y, X's actions with Y are the fault of A).

Equally flawed, but the same.

By: TC

TC — Wed, 12 Apr 2006 17:27:26 +0000

"Since the crime isn't stealing but rather littering, the new requirements aren't punishing the victims but rather punishing the enablers."

Does that mean we can go after fast food places, coke and pepsi and such when we find litter with their logo on it too?

Gee I thought there were already anti littering laws?

I must have been mistaken!