by: Bryce Moore
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HONOLULU (KHON2) — A push to keep shopping carts off Oahu’s streets is moving forward at the City Council, but advocates said the bill will punish people who live in poverty.
The bill would make possessing a shopping cart off store property a petty misdemeanor. Supporters said it protects businesses and clears sidewalks while opponents call it a direct attack on people who are homeless.
Proposed bill looks at targeting abandoned shopping carts
—HPD specifically named in their testimony that they want to use this to target unhoused people for the use of shopping carts,
said ACLU of Hawaii policy director Mandy Fernandes.
So, they want to be able to arrest people just on site because they have a shopping cart.
Retail experts disagreed with the idea that the bill only targets one group.
“You may go drive by somebody’s garage that’s open and you see a shopping cart in there, and they’re using it for wood that they’re building something with. So, it’s not just one demographic, it’s anybody who takes a cart away from the premises of a supermarket or a store or a retailer,” said Dave Erdman, Retail Merchants of Hawaii interim president and CEO.
Erdman said replacing stolen carts can cost retailers between $250 to $750 per unit when ordered in bulk.
“So, somewhere that cost is buried back into expenses,” he said. “And there’s one person testified, you know, ‘Is the cost of my bread higher because people are taking shopping carts?’ Well, potentially, yes!”
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“Shopping carts don’t really fall into that category of, like, weapons and drugs. Shopping carts should not be treated as, this, per se, you know, criminal item to possess,” Fernandes said.
A proposed floor amendment that would have downgraded possessing a shopping cart to a non-criminal violation was withdrawn, so fines and jail time remain on the table.
“It does nothing to mitigate abandoned shopping carts,” Fernandes said. “In fact, it actually incentivizes the abandonment of shopping carts because if somebody is afraid to get arrested and they have a shopping cart, what else are they going to do with it?”
“We’re just trying to help solve a problem that many say that has been an issue and it comes back to us trying to work with partners to see what would be the best solution,” Erdman said.
The bill now heads back to committee before a potential final vote in early December. Store owners would have six months to mark their carts before enforcement begins, if it passes.