New Mexico Governor praises Las Cruces shopping cart ordinance, hints at statewide action

On Wednesday, a shopping cart ordinance officially go into effect in Las Cruces, allowing police officers to legally cite people for using carts outside of a businesses property and also requires businesses to have a detailed plan on how they will prevent carts from being stolen.

KFOX14 spoke with Police Chief Jeremy Story on how they prepared the community for the ordinance to be enforced.

The education for the officers, making sure they understand what the ordinance says, what people can and can’t do, and then how to enforce it,” Story said. “Since they’ve passed, we’ve had an education campaign with our community advocates and our community outreach sections specifically, and the Community of Hope has obviously been doing their own education as well. They’ve been providing alternatives since it passed.

Since this ordinance has passed, Story said its had to be all hands on deck.

The Community of Hope, the Las Cruces Police Department, city leaders and even residents coming together to provide those alternatives over the last couple of months.

“Whenever we heard about this initiative that LCPD was going to do, my organization, we pitched in, we collected over $2000 and were able to donate about 30 wagons for this effort and it looks like it’s going really well,” Las Cruces resident Juan Garcia said.

The mission has been to switch out shopping carts for wagons and backpacks, not only to help clean up the city, but to put a stop to shopping cart theft.

A woman KFOX14 spoke to telling us she took hers, from Walmart.

“They were just out in the street, we just got it and went and used it,” Rebecca Magealeno said.

She traded hers in for a wagon last week, before this ordinance took affect on Wednesday, as citations, fines and even jail time are now at stake.

“I don’t expect officers to stop what they’re doing, they’re very busy, going to call to call often, so they may not be able to stop and deal with someone when they see them with a cart, but we have mechanisms to do that without impacting our overall operations and the other stuff we need to accomplish,” Chief Story said.

It’s an effort New Mexico Governor Michelle Lujan-Grisham tells KFOX14 in an exclusive interview, should set an example for the state, as Las Cruces isn’t the only area being met with a growing homeless population and shopping cart problem.

You have to have these ordinances,” Lujan-Grisham said. “I live in Santa Fe, where they don’t have any of these. Santa Fe is a harsh environment right now. You have to have these ordinances and I’m expecting that with the leadership here in Cruces, and leadership in the county, I think you’ll expect to see a lot of mayors do the same and that’s not going to stop us from introducing very similar statewide legislation.