RCMP scrap shopping cart roundup

The Kelowna RCMP have backtracked on their earlier threat to seize stolen shopping carts from homeless people.

Last month, the Okanagan detachment had announced that as of April 1, all stolen shopping carts would be returned to the supermarkets which own them.

• FROM MARCH 18, 2005: Interior city cracking down on homeless

But that had triggered an angry backlash in the community. And the cart seizure plan is now officially off the books, says RCMP Inspector Steve McVarnick.

"The current plan for shopping carts in Kelowna is that there is no plan for shopping carts in Kelowna."

McVarnick says the RCMP will concentrate on what he sees as the real problem drugs and property crime.

"We've refocused, based on the media coverage of the shopping cart issue. Everybody is clear the downtown initiatives are going to focus on criminal activity."

Rob Weatherspoon of the B.C. Government And Service Employees Union, who had been heading an effort to donate shopping carts to the homeless, is pleased with the RCMP decision.

"That's good news," he says. "And hopefully they've become sensitized to the impact of taking shopping carts from the most vulnerable people in our society."

The RCMP now says the only way a shopping cart will be taken from a street person is if that person has been arrested for another crime.