This is how retail in a city dies, especially small business
From the East Bay Times:
Large retailers are paying for police protection in Oakland
Walgreens, Target join Home Depot in requesting dedicated officers
In an apparent effort to reduce crime inside and outside their stores, Walgreens and Target are joining Home Depot in paying overtime to Oakland police officers for some protection.
Walgreens and Target last month asked the Oakland Police Department to provide officers at their locations, police spokesman Paul Chambers confirmed. The department, which in 2019 allowed officers to work overtime at Home Depot, agreed.
At an hourly overtime rate of $91.43 plus a 15.5% fee the city charges for officers’ service, Home Depot has paid out $2.1 million since the arrangement began in March 2019, according to Chambers.
That is a lot of money for a big company to pay out for security.
That’s not the only consideration.
Pamela Drake, the former director of the Lakeshore Business Improvement District and member of the Coalition For Police Accountability, expressed some skepticism about the deal.
“This seems like a screwy arrangement,” Drake said. “If something happens, which is inevitable, who is going to be liable for that bad response?”
While officers are working outside their normal shifts for the detail, “they are not under the direction or supervision of the store’s management,” Chambers noted. He said they still have to abide by police department rules and are supervised by command staff.
Still, the arrangement blurs lines between private and public policing, and Drake said she also wonders whether it is right to have armed police officers securing the stores.
“Whether we should have armed people at these stores, I think that is something that should be a public discussion,” she said, adding that she hopes the police commission looks into it.
The anti-cop, pro-criminal Leftists are clearly going to try and put the businesses on the hook if a criminal is shot by police while providing overtime security.
Big-box retailers can afford this, for now. This means criminals will target the smaller, independent retailers that can’t afford security, driving them out of business.
The big-box retailers are also probably considering closing some locations. I would. Look at the balance sheet of which stores have the lowest retail revenue to security costs and shut them down.
The police are unable to handle the amount of crime on the streets so are hired for post-shift security work, which increases costs and now you have a death spiral.
These cities are doing a bang-up job of making it impossible to do business and live a decent quality of life there.
It amazes me that these blue bubbles have so much political power when inside of them they are all third-world failed states.
