Chart of the Day: Big Box Store Closings – Retail Crime to Blame

Major retailers in the US have been forced to shut down stores due to millions of dollars in losses as rampant theft plagues big box stores across the country.

This week, Walmart announced it will shut down four of its stores in Chicago just weeks after America’s biggest employer shuttered its only stores in Portland. It comes as shoplifting reaches alarming levels and other large retailers, including Target, Macy’s, and Best Buy,  are now making good on threats to shutter outlets if the petty crime is not lowered. See below the recent big box store closings due to crime and learn more here.

Below is a recent video report from NBC that shows how retail crime is organized, growing, and how the big box stores are fighting back.

Of course, the cries of potential human rights abuses and racial profiling are coming to light, as many of the big box corporates are not sanctioned police and may overstep their bounds.

Across the country, communities and businesses, both large and small, are facing a surge in theft and violent crime. This surge is due not to one-time shoplifters but to the rise in highly organized criminal groups – organized retail crime rings.

Organized retail theft rings exploit local laws, intentionally stealing no more than the dollar-amount threshold to be considered felony theft and employing a large number of individuals to commit a large number of thefts just below that threshold. See some interesting factoids from the US Chamber of Commerce here. See the most recent factoid below to begin to understand the cost to society.

2021 was another violent retail year in US retail, with incidents up 9 percent and fatalities up 14 percent from the previous year. See the trend in the chart below and learn more here.

One would have to be living in a cave not to understand the reasons for this rise. There are a plethora of Left-wing Democrat policies enacted that have clearly fueled this rise – defund police policies, no bail releases, minimum theft amounts, early prison release, and soft crime prosecutions, just to name a few. This does not even speak to the ongoing “woke” culture war that has destroyed any sense of moral traditional families. Then there is illegal immigration and drugs as well.

The solution? Leave big cities – there is no fixing this?

By Tom Williams