1/9/14 Grand Theft Shopping Cart

0109 Grand Theft Shopping Cart

Newstalk 970 WBLF. I’m Wes Richards with some thoughts on a growing crime problem.

Once a horse thief could be shot.

Now, steal a car and you’ll do time.

So stealing someone else’s transportation is nothing new.

What’s next?

In the parking lot of a big box store, men in green jumpsuits are doing what looks from a distance like repairs to a long line of shopping carts that seem pristine.

Repairs?  No.  They’re new. What they’re doing is putting tiny little tracking devices, mini GPS locators in a place they would disclose only if I didn’t tell all.  So I won’t.

The thought:  They want to track the carts through the aisles so they can see how long people look at a particular shelf or section.  Maybe this is a prelude to letting people scan their items as they go and then check out automatically at the door.

Nope.

Nothing so experimental.

They want to track the carts when someone pushes them out of the store, out of the parking lot, onto the sidewalk, then home where they are abandoned.

Really, are THAT many stolen and not returned?  

Yup.

Green suit invites me to tour the neighborhood, and in a circle of less than a mile, we spotted more than a dozen orphan carts.

“These things are expensive,” he says.  And they disappear at a terrible rate.”  

How many, how often?  Classified.

How much does the GPS add to the cost? Classified.

Where is the transmitter so the collection van knows where to go? Classified.

Stealing shopping carts is as old as shopping.

This little experiment in electronic surveillance could not have been done thoroughly even a few years ago.  But now, thanks to the NSA, the Pentagon, the phone companies and Google Earth it’s cheap and easy.

And you can bet if the experiment is even close to successful companies will be using these nationwide.

The American Civil Liberties Union will take the merchants to court on some kind of a privacy violation charge and probably will win at least the first round.

What would Alvah Roebuck or R.H. Macy think? Or even Sam Walton.  Or Wyatt Earp?

I’m Wes Richards.  My opinions are my own but you’re welcome to them. ®