City of Coos Bay report – The Coos Bay Police Department (CBPD) is seeking community support and assistance with addressing abandoned shopping carts within our community. Near the end of 2023, our Coos Bay City Council passed an ordinance aimed at addressing abandoned shopping carts within our community. This ordinance intends to build a bridge between government, businesses, and the community, to work together to report these carts in the City of Coos Bay and get them returned to the appropriate business. Over the last few months, local businesses have worked to get their shopping cart fleets marked with contact information for their respective retrieval services. This allows members of the public who find shopping carts abandoned in their neighborhoods, parks, and sidewalks the ability to contact that retrieval service to report the location of the abandoned cart. The local business will then retrieve these carts through their retrieval program. CBPD has deployed a new program to augment the efforts of this ordinance with the Shopping Cart Watch Program. Similar to the Property Watch Program, the CBPD worked with participating businesses to remove some barriers that were creating challenges when it came to holding those accountable who were using shopping carts for personal use around town. This new program has streamlined the ability for the CBPD to take criminal action against shopping cart theft on behalf of participating businesses. To date, we have four local businesses who are participating in this program. We hope through community engagement we can get the abandoned carts reported to the respective businesses for retrieval and work to deter these thefts through enforcement by our police department.
