COMMUNITY COMMENTARY:Victim shouldn't be punished for broken law

So let me get this right: If someone breaks into my house and steals my TV, the city will fine me for letting them steal it?

That's essentially what the council came up with last week with its shopping cart ordinance ("Council votes to lasso stray grocery carts," March 24). In case you missed it, what council members said was that the stores in Burbank now have to pay for some sort of theft containment system in order to keep people from stealing their shopping carts.

Let's make no mistake about it: Removing shopping carts from store premises is theft, pure and simple. State law says so; everyone at the council meeting agreed. Yet the Council agreed to go on letting people do it.

Contrary to popular belief, the bulk of people stealing these carts are not senior citizens desperate to get their groceries home. They're common thieves who take them because they can. They're punk kids who want to race them in alleys and play on them. They're people with no respect for the law. They seem to think that by not keeping the stolen cart, by leaving it at the corner in someone else's yard, that they haven't committed a crime.

Well, by that rationale, if I break into the nice new car I see on the street and drive it around, as long as I park it a couple blocks from my house, well by golly, I haven't committed a crime.

By the city's own reckoning, there are up to 500 carts littering Burbank streets at any given time. Carts that can cost up to $1,000 apiece.

That means stores are losing a combined $500,000. So what do we do about that fact? Slap a penalty on the stores, not the thieves.

Now those stores have to pay for a costly theft-prevention system.

They're going to need to make that money back. And where do you think it's going to come from? They're going to raise prices of their items and sap funds from employee resources such as health care and wages.

So in the end, we all end up paying that cost out of our own pockets.

We're all victims in this seemingly victimless crime. So, I ask, where does it stop? Where do we stop picking and choosing which laws we abide by? When do we stop punishing the victims? Are we going to fine someone whose house gets broken into? What about the person whose car is stolen? Are we going to arrest an assault victim so they don't get attacked again?

How much backward logic can possibly be used in this process?

Now here's a better idea: Let the police do their job and police our streets. Let them stop the criminals stealing carts, fine them and force them to return the carts.

Simple solution with effective results. The money collected from the fines could go to much-needed city resources such as police and street repairs, just to name a couple. It works in other cities all over this country, why not here?

This is a crime that happens countless times every day in this city. So what's the solution? Enforce the law? No.

Punish the victims. But why should I expect more from a council that also helped give illegal aliens a hangout at Home Depot?