Walgreens didnt abandon Chicagos South Side. We let crime drive them out
Walgreens didn’t leave the South Side of Chicago because they hate Black people.They left because we made it impossible for them to stay.Just recently, another Walgreens shut down on Cottage Grove, and once again the public conversation turned in the wrong direction.
People started blaming the company, blaming corporate greed, blaming everything except the conditions on the ground that made staying there untenable.But businesses do not keep stores open out of charity.
They stay where people shop, where customers feel safe, and where theft and disorder do not make daily operations a losing proposition.At that Cottage Grove Walgreens, the theft was off the charts.By local reports, the store lost more than a million dollars to theft in a single year.
Walgreens poured roughly $400,000 into security guards at that one location and still couldn’t stop the shoplifting, the brazen grab-and-runs and the threats to staff.All the while, honest customers, especially the elderly, came in less because they didn’t feel safe.
When you combine high theft, high security and insurance costs, and falling sales, the math stops working.In a capitalist country, no corporation can ignore that kind of math forever.I know this pain personally.
Several years ago, the Walgreens just feet from my church on King Drive in Woodlawn closed its doors too.Across the street, the McDonald’s fled as well.
I didn’t blame either of them then, and I don’t blame Walgreens now.I blamed the violence in the community, the rampant theft and the declining sales that made it harder and harder for those businesses to survive.AMERICAN SMALL BUSINESS OWNERS FIGHT TO SURVIVE CRIPPLING DINE-AND-DASH CRIME SPREESWhat really bothers me are the people talking about everything except the real issue.
We had Ald.William Hall stand in front of cameras and say Walgreens should be charged with "first-degree corporate abandonment." He even called it "pharmaceutical genocide" and said, "It should be a crime, ...