Is Walmart a public nuisance?
Dennis Buckley, the mayor of Beech Grove, IN has had it with the local Walmart store. After a series of criminal incidents, including one that went viral involving a brawl between two women and a six-year-old boy in the shampoo aisle of the store, Mr. Buckley has declared the store a public nuisance. What that means is that the city may issue the store fines when police respond to calls at the business in the future.
While the women and child fighting in the store drew national attention after someone videotaped the incident, other crimes committed at the Walmart have led to more violent consequences.
Back in June, a shoplifting suspect at the store fled police, ran a red light and crashed his vehicle into another, killing the 63-year-old woman driver and injuring two of her family members.
Last week, in another shoplifting incident, a suspect brandished a handgun after being caught by store security personnel. The suspected shoplifter ran off and wound up at a nearby restaurant where he shot himself as police moved in.
Source: indystar.com
According to an Indianapolis Star report, Beech Grove police made 1,278 trips to the Walmart store resulting in 473 arrests between February of last year and mid-June of this.
After the fight between the women in the store back in June, Mayor Buckley told the Star, "This isn’t anything new. We have been concerned about this for at least two years, and there have been just some quiet talks with Wal-Mart concerning the number of police runs down there and the fact that they’re draining our resources every single day. It’s my opinion as mayor that this has to stop."
For its part, Walmart has expressed frustration over ongoing incidents at the store. While it has pledged to seek ways to work with Beech Grove to limit the number of times that its police force has to respond to calls, incidents continue to happen.
"We’re better than that, our community is better than that and I don’t want to get a phone call every day saying that somebody pulled a gun at Walmart and has done something out of line," Mayor Buckley told the Star.
Discussion Questions
Should retailers pay local municipalities additional fees for added public costs such as frequent trips by police to stores to arrest shoplifting suspects, break up fights, etc.? What would you do if you were responsible for the Walmart store in Beech Grove?
Poll
BrainTrust
Chris Petersen, PhD.
President, Integrated Marketing Solutions
Paula Rosenblum
Co-founder, RSR Research
I’d like to know what Walmart is doing to increase security at the store. One-thousand two-hundred seventy-eight police visits in a 15 month period is excessive. If the store is too dangerous for employees and customers, perhaps it needs to close.
If I were responsible for the Walmart store in Beech Grove I would close it due to “plumbing problems.” This is no different than having a rowdy tavern in the neighborhood that draws a morally offensive clientele. Beech Grove should certainly fine any business that has too many police calls.
Wait a minute, is this about the retailer or about the values and behavior of a community?
What if Walmart closed its doors and left the community? Does the blame and responsibility for community behavior then shift to the local dollar store?
This is a difficult issue.
One the one hand the police exist in order to maintain public safety, so answering calls — whether from Walmart or the house next door to Walmart — is really their job.
On the other hand, there is plenty of legal precedent for declaring certain addresses, commercial or residential, problematic. In these cases it isn’t totally out of line for police or other first responders to charge residents for excessive calls.
That said, there is a difference between calling the police every other night because one “heard something suspicious” or to resolve an ongoing dispute between neighbors and calling them because an actual crime has been committed.
Shoplifting is a crime. So is assault and battery. It shouldn’t really matter where the crime occurs. Walmart, after all, isn’t a dope house or an after-hours club or any other kind of business whose normal course of trade encourages criminal behavior.
So what’s the solution?
Increased and/or improved security on Walmart’s part seems to be a good place to start. That ought to go a long way to reducing the number of calls for police.
If that doesn’t work, I don’t think it is entirely fair to ask taxpayers to support the escalating cost of providing emergency services to what — for whatever reasons — has become a problem address and some charge to Walmart may be in order.
There’s not much question that the typical Walmart store doesn’t exactly raise one’s cultural sophistication to new heights. You go there for cheap stuff not an enlightening experience. We’ve all seen the slide decks featuring “Walmart shoppers you won’t believe.” Here in Scottsdale, Arizona I keep going to Walmart hoping to see some of those folks and all I get are perfectly reasonable people dressed, for the most part, very appropriately.
This isn’t about the store so much as the culture and mentality of the surrounding community. Policing Walmart isn’t going to fix that. Mayor Buckley has a bigger challenge on his hands than nuisance events at Walmart.
I have a different take on this. All these potential issues should be taken into account BEFORE a Walmart or other big-box store is given permits to open in a specific area.
I lived in Dedham, MA for many years. I know the town has changed a lot in the decade or so since I’ve been gone, but while I lived there, the Board of Selectmen (the town’s form of government) would always consider things like additional police protection, impact on roads and traffic and potential security concerns ahead of the fact when a new store or mall was going to open. It was incumbent to weigh those risks against the “reward” of incremental tax revenue and “jobs.” They’d had one bad experience in the late-’50s with the “Dedham Mall” and the town government never forgot it. From then on, they always did their homework.
So in my opinion, the mayor and his team blew it. None of this should have been a surprise. Contracts should have reflected “what ifs” assuming the town felt the return on a Walmart investment was worthwhile.
Too often town officials say “Oh good: jobs and cheap stuff” and ignore unintended consequences. This may be a not-so-popular point of view, but in my opinion that bed is now made. The town will have to lie in it.
No. If one store is the location of a lot of crime, local police should patrol the area or station police officers there just as they would any high crime area in their city.
Now if I were the manager of the store in Beech Grove, I would consider asking off-duty police to monitor my store at my expense just to keep the good customers feeling safe while they shop at my store.
I do not think this is typical of Walmart stores or any retailer as much as it may be just a high crime area that is the concern.
Beech Grove has less than 15,000 residents so it is not a city that you would expect to have a crime problem. However it is at the intersection of Interstate 65 and route 36 and at the beginning of Interstate 74 so it is an ideal location for Walmart.
I would expect that many of the instances the stores faces are not from city residents but from those that came to specifically shop the Walmart. Supporting my theory, with 14,000 residents in the city the number of incidents would equate to about 10 percent of the population having been involved in an incident in the past 15 months. Something like that is highly unlikely.
For whatever reason this location draws trouble. It needs to find a way to internally address it, be willing to pay for the disproportionate policing it requires or close the store.
Yes, retailers should pay local municipalities additional fees for added public costs when the circumstances are as egregious as this.
If I were responsible for the Walmart store in Beech Grove, I’d get help fast — like yesterday. Doesn’t Walmart have contingencies or concerns about what’s happening in one of its stores? This is a business issue as well as a social (community) issue, but the community and its facilities should NOT have to bear the extra burden of what sounds like an extreme aberration.
At the very least, Walmart should pay for the disproportionate policing it requires (which sounds WAY beyond what should be acceptable by a community or its services) — but close the store if a reasonable solution cannot be found.
I agree with Max’s comments. The statistics are astounding. If there are this many incidents it appears the police need to almost be stationed at the Walmart. These numbers equate to something like 2.5 calls a day. That is well past a black eye on this store and community. Walmart has to become more involved or move the store to a safer location.
Good luck on that one. Walmart forces the cities to pay for the road widening for their stores and additional traffic signals, plus tax abatements. Does anyone think they are going to pay for extra security themselves? This should be addressed internally, but it probably isn’t going to happen.
Maybe it is just me but I’m having a hard time understanding how this is Walmart’s fault. Weren’t these criminals living there before? Are they doing something to encourage them?
Many years ago, i ran a store for a large chain in an inner city location where we had similar problems. It was a battle ground everyday and I’m sure the local police got tired of coming by (I know I got tired of calling them). Yet having that store available was a great benefit for most of our shoppers, who typically walked there. Sometime after I left it closed permanently and the lot is now vacant so presumably the police aren’t quite as busy at that location anymore. But the real losers are the good folks who live in the area but no longer have a store close enough to walk to.
What they are really upset about is the fact they probably gave a sweetheart deal with tax exemptions that would have helped cover the cost of the police. No municipality should have to be railroaded into providing free services.
Wait a minute : isn’t Walmart ALREADY paying “additional” fees in property and (implicitly) sales taxes—and whatever other levies businesses there face—since it is an above average sized retailer? And however much it may be using in police resources, how much is it using in (what is the real drain on municipal budgets) school costs? Not much, I imagine.
Mr. Buckley’s publicity stunt got Beech Grove a few minutes in the national spotlight…congratulations.
To compare this store in rural/small town Indiana to a Walmart in Scottsdale or suburban Chicago is comparing apples and oranges. In a geographic area like this where once the small villages each had their own self sustaining “main street,” people now often have to drive miles on the interstate just to get fast food, groceries or other items that Walmart and Dollar Stores offer. And it’s not always the price for them. It’s having a place—any place—to shop. This particular store may draw a varied element of locals and travelers (and some undesirables) due to its location at the junction of roads. But these shoppers would not want it to close and have to drive even further to supply their homes and pantries and I think the mayor better be very careful with his balancing act here.
I’d like to know how much in sales tax dollars this store pumps back into the state and city before I would ask them for additional fees. It might be more effective for The Beech Grove manager to offer to be billed for the cost of an on-site Beech Grove police shift for the period during the day-night when there is historically more need for police assistance to augment his private security and loss prevention staff.
The need for law enforcement does not rely on the presence of surroundings and/or inanimate objects used to enforce one individual’s will over another individual or group. Simply adding the costs associated with settling the crime to the fines that should be paid by the law breakers should solve many unexpected enforcement burdens. But in the good ole’ USA, only the victims pay.
The local government is charged with protecting its citizens and businesses and should be actively protecting its assets, including the presence of a Walmart. The city can ignore the problem and direct blame at the retailer, though it looks like government and Walmart are working together to find a solution here—admirable. Cooperation is key as the city should not leave Walmart to foot the bill for added security until the cost/benefit scales tip and the store is closed and the property vacant. That’s the Detroit model and it left the city without any major grocery retailers for decades.