(Photo by Don Wielgus)
WESTFIELD- Unsightly shopping carts left in residential areas around the city are a problem for the businesses which own the carts and the residents who find them on their property.
“It’s a quality of life issue,” said Community Police Officer Mark Carboneau.”It’s definitely an eyesore. Residents don’t like to see them”.
He said the shopping carts are each worth over $250 and removing them from the parking lots is technically larceny.
Despite this fact, proving that a person intentionally stole a shopping cart is a grey area. Without proper signs indicating shopping cart policies, Carboneau said that it is very hard to charge persons because they frequently claim they were told that they could take them and because it would be hard to prove that they intended to keep them.
“It’s their word against ours,” said Carboneau. “Since there’s nothing about the regulation in writing (in parking lots) we are at a standstill”.
He said that although supermarkets have shopping cart inventory checks and have employees who pick up carts which have strayed, those effort are insufficient to deal with the issue of abandoned carts in the city.
Carboneau said he has advised local supermarket managers that posted signs warning customers of the law would allow police more leverage in charging people who steal the carts, but without such signs the police have limited options.
Residents who see lost carts may call the stores the carts came from so that the owners may recover their property.
