Watch out Commerce City businesses. Some on Council want to penalize businesses for having their property stolen.

Council members Noble and Chacon appear to be OK blaming grocery stores when carts are stolen.

There is a school of thought – a rather commonly held one, we would think – that holds if you steal something from someone, then you – not the person from whom you stole it – should be held accountable.

That is apparently not a universally held principle by some elected to represent Commerce City residents and businesses.

At a study session last week, City Council discussed a proposed ordinance to ban shopping carts from city parks and other public spaces; generally, shopping carts that were stolen from local grocery stores and used by homeless folks as mobile storage. Those caught with a shopping cart in such a place would receive a citation. This would in fact be a broadening of a current ordinance that prohibits shopping carts from being removed from the premise that owns them, enforceable by fining – the business from which the cart was removed.

Now the good news is that the cooler heads charged with enforcing this law report that no businesses have actually been fined for this.

At least that would be good news to most of us. Council member Renee Chacon, on the other hand, was most disturbed by that revelation: In the course of questioning the park ranger supervisor over the existing program, the proposed new ordinance, and the overall problem, she remarked: “…it was kind of concerning to hear that there was no citation for businesses… this is kind of twofold. We still need them to be somewhat disciplined and accountable for what their inventory is too. So it's kind of a fine line because I don't want to target them, but they still have to take care of their stuff.”

Well, it certainly sounds like you want to target them. And how exactly is this a fine line? The responsibility, legally and morally, is on someone to not steal other people’s property… not on the victim to ensure their property doesn’t get stolen.

She was not alone in this view of course. Chacon’s partner-in-crime-tolerance, Mayor Pro Tem Susan Noble, said earlier, “I think that we need to go back to the source of the problem and that's access to grocery carts. That the stores that have grocery carts aren't adequately taking care of their carts.”

Um, no, the problem is not access to grocery carts, it’s people stealing grocery carts. That’s like saying the source of the problem with vehicle theft is people having cars. But she continued:

“Our businesses need to take better care of their carts instead of making us figure out how to take care of it.”

The last time we checked, it was the job of grocery stores to sell groceries; it was the job of the city to protect its citizens – including business owners – from being victimized.  

It was also disconcerting, though not surprising, to hear those two care far more about the need of some people to have stolen grocery carts in their possession rather than the business owners who have to deal with having their property stolen, and the local consumers who have to pay more because of the thefts, and the local citizens who have to contend with the stolen carts heaped high with sundry – well, all kinds of stuff – as they try to navigate or enjoy local parks.

Noble said “I'm very empathetic to the homeless who are down to their last little bits of stuff that are very important to them. And I can understand why they would be so excited to actually be in possession of a cart rather than the alternative of trash bag.”

And Chacon asked the park ranger supervisor, not about whether he thought the new ordinance would be effective in solving the problem, but rather, “this doesn’t criminalize homelessness, does it?”

There may be legitimate concerns about the new ordinance; for example, as Council member Ford pointed out, most, if not all, of those who would be issued the citations for having the stolen carts in public area’s simply cant or won’t pay the fine; and in any case, there is no provision for actually impounding the cart and returning it to it’s rightful owner. And of course, there is the wider problem of what to do about the homeless population in our city.

But blaming the victim is hardly the place to start.