Walgreens has announced that it is closing a store in the Chatham neighborhood of Chicago. They claim that the store is losing upwards of a million dollars a year to theft, so the reason for the closure is no mystery. They say that this particular store loses more in theft than any other store.
And yet… The political leaders in Chicago, who allow thieves to run wild, are angry at Walgreens.
They caused this, with their soft on crime policies, yet they are mad at Walgreens for closing the location.
FOX 32 in Chicago reported:
Walgreens to close Chatham store after more than $1M loss, cites theft and declining sales
Walgreens executives revealed the store lost more than a million dollars last year, partly due to declining prescription sales but also a massive amount of store theft.
“Theft at this store is 16 percent,” Johnson said. “That’s four times above the company average.”
And the company explained that they tried to stop theft.
“Lock boxes help us protect the merchandise in the store. A lot of the time, those lock boxes were getting destroyed. And that’s at a great cost to the company,” said Jason Vasquez, Walgreens District Manager.
They say Walgreens was spending $400,000 a year on security guards in the store, but there were still attacks on store employees.
“We’ve had people jump across the counters, because we sell liquor behind the counter, taking liquor, cigarettes… That wears. That wears down. Not so much the financial piece but the endurance of that day in and day out,” said Lonnie Fuqua, the store’s manager.
Guy Benson of the Washington Examiner reports on the local outrage:
Walgreens is shuttering a location in Chicago, upsetting residents, and stirring fury among exploitative and complicit politicians. The way some local “leaders” tell it, the drugstore chain is acting greedily, selfishly, or even criminally.
“Walgreens should be charged with first-degree corporate abandonment,” thundered a local alderman. “It should be a crime, the way they’re treating our elders. It should be a crime, the way they’re treating our families.”…
A 16% theft rate with frequent physical attacks on employees, all despite a $400,000-per-year security expenditure, led to bleeding red ink. It was obviously unsustainable. But in Mayor Brandon Johnson’s Chicago, the “problem” is Walgreens declining to forge ahead with this dangerous madness indefinitely. Politicians ask, “What about the resulting ‘prescription desert’ for community members?
Perhaps they should worry first and foremost about maintaining the rule of law in said community.
Here’s the problem for these leftist leaders in Chicago. You can’t protest reality.
The store is closing because of you. Walgreens is not the problem. You are.
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