Byram explains the shopping cart ordinance
By Terry Murry on Thursday, August 5th, 2021 in Columbia Basin News More Top Stories
PENDLETON – The city of Pendleton now has a shopping cart ordinance that allows police to issue citations to businesses that fail to retrieve abandoned shopping carts in a set amount of time. Police Chief Chuck Byram said that most businesses in Pendleton are already quick to recover abandoned carts. The ordinance is aimed at a few that aren’t.
“We have certain businesses within our community that refuse to be a good community partner,” he said. “When I say refuse to be a good community partner, I mean refuse to step up and engage in being responsible for their own property, and coming and helping us retrieve that property.”
Byram said if officers have time to return the carts, they do. He was bothered by the few businesses who refused to pick them up when PPD was too busy. He began to look to find out what other cities and towns are doing and tailored Pendleton’s after those.
Byram said there are only one or two businesses who refuse to pick up their carts if the city doesn’t have the time or resources. He also said his department is not ignoring the fact that people are committing a crime when they take carts without permission.
“We’re still citing people for theft of shopping carts,” he said. “We’ve actually gotten one prison conviction for a theft of a motorized shopping cart from Walmart. We’re still doing all that, but we need a little bit more help from the businesses that are refusing to help because it’s affecting the whole community.”
