EVERETT June 4: The Everett Police Department announced they collected 60 shopping carts across the city as part of the Shopping Cart Recovery Program the week of May 20. A total of 206 carts have been collected this year so far, valued at approximately $79,800.
The Shopping Cart Recovery Program is an effort from Everett PD to remove abandoned shopping carts from the city with the help from community volunteers.
“Since the beginning of the program, the volunteers have worked to collect and return shopping carts across the city in their commitment to providing excellent service to our community and local businesses. Abandoned shopping carts can be a nuisance that detracts from our beautiful city. Theft of shopping carts hurts local businesses as they can be costly to replace,” Everett PD wrote in a Facebook post.
Since the beginning of the program in 2022, 1,240 shopping carts have been recovered, equating to $372,000. According to Police Public Information Officer Natalie Given, the carts are returned to the retailer that owns them after being collected.
The Everett Municipal Code and Revised Code of Washington Statue state that it is illegal to remove shopping carts from a retail establishment or to be in possession of a shopping cart off the property of a retail establishment, Community Outreach Sergeant Robert Edmonds wrote in an email.
Edmonds wrote that the goal of the program is to return stolen property and connect individuals in need to social workers. The team has not made any arrests for those in possession of a shopping cart off retail property.
“Shopping carts have a value range between $250 on the low end and $550 on the high end. Retailers have told us that it’s common for them to spend $20,000 to $100,000 to replace stolen shopping carts. They have also told us that when they don’t have shopping carts for the shoppers their overall sales decrease dramatically,” Edmonds wrote.
There are two different parts to the program, and each includes different City of Everett team members, Edmonds wrote.
“On a normal cart recovery operation, our Police Volunteers go out by themselves and recover clearly abandoned shopping carts that no one is actively using. They do this by both responding to online complaints regarding abandoned shopping carts and going out and proactively look for them,” Edmonds wrote.
Two weeks ago, they conducted a larger scale recover operation that involved Community Outreach and Enforcement Team (COET) and social workers, where they collected 60 shopping carts according to the Everett PD Facebook post.
“The COET is a team of police officers and social workers co-responding to provide a balanced approach to homelessness, substance use and mental health through outreach and enforcement. COET began in 2015 to address street-level social issues, the opioid epidemic and chronic homelessness,” Edmonds wrote.
Edmonds wrote that social workers make an effort to connect individuals in need with services, navigation resources, and general education.
“We try to respect the rights of the retailers by returning their stolen property while simultaneously trying to connect the individual who has the cart with services. Often the cart is full of the individual’s personal property. In an effort to recover the cart and not just throw the individual’s property on the ground, we provide them with large duffle bags,” Edmonds wrote.
“People use them to transfer their belongings and of course it is not the primary effort to take that away. This is really a cleanup effort to help our public works team,” Given said.
If you would like to volunteer, anyone 18 and older with a clean background can volunteer Edmonds wrote. Recently he noted a flood of interest in applicants to help with the program.
If you would like to report an abandoned shopping cart, visit: https://bit.ly/3UZkIlb
If you would like to volunteer to clean up the City of Everett, see here: https://www.everettwa.gov/880/Adopt-a-Street, https://www.everettwa.gov/453/Graffiti-Program
