Retailers have to get over the outdated idea that their stores are there to make a profit.

That is the message of a NEWS story in the Business section of my local paper, the StarTribune.

Typical @StarTribune to blame corporations for closing. The city & state made theft under $900 legal & no bail. The "community" failed themselves.
Target’s closings because of crime protect its profit, but at expense of communities and customers. https://t.co/9sZr1XMP4z

— Polarice1984 (@polarice1984) October 2, 2023

Target, you see, is closing stores in crime-ridden areas. This move follows those of other retailers like Nike, CVS, Walgreens, and a host of other chains in cities across America. God knows how many non-chain stores have closed due to crime.

Target painted New York City red and white in 2010 when it opened its East Harlem location, its first permanent store in Manhattan, after years of courting and anticipation from locals.

Target mascot Bullseye rang the New York Stock Exchange opening bell, and the retailer’s ads splashed across Times Square, double-decker buses and subways.

But now the Harlem Target, in a shopping complex along the Harlem River, is one of nine in Seattle, Portland and the San Francisco Bay Area that the Minneapolis-based retailer will close Oct. 21. Target announced the swath of closures last week with a stark news release, citing theft and safety as the reason. Target declined to provide further comment outside of the original release.

Closing stores is an extreme measure to combat crime and safety concerns, and while Target’s move was one of the strongest recent examples of that, it isn’t alone. In San Francisco, several stores have closed, including Nordstrom and a new Whole Foods.

Retailers cutting their losses in big cities already facing post-pandemic challenges is yet another hurdle for major downtowns hoping to re-establish their vitality.

“Retailers cutting their losses in big cities already facing post-pandemic challenges is yet another hurdle for major downtowns hoping to re-establish their vitality.”

This observation is obviously correct, and any normal human being would look at what is happening and conclude that the efforts to “defund the police” and alter public safety policies have been a disaster. Before 2020, these stores were viable; after the George Floyd riots and the shift in policing, they no longer are.

Who made that happen? Certainly not the retailers. It was the activists and policymakers.

That’s not how our intrepid business reporter sees it. It is racism, not safety and viability as a going concern that motivates these evil corporations to yank their “public service” missions.

“All East Harlemites deserve to live near convenient, affordable, healthy grocery stores,” New York Assembly Member Eddie Gibbs, whose district includes East Harlem, said in a statement. “Target served as an economic anchor for this community, employing over 200 people and providing invaluable and affordable food choices. With [last week’s] announcement, East Harlem residents must leave their neighborhoods and spend money outside their communities to feed their families.”

Myra Shallan, 34, has lived in Harlem for almost four years and said Target had been a staple in the neighborhood. But the impending closure has proved to her the company wasn’t a true community partner. She added she thinks the store closing has less to do with theft and more to do with Target wanting to prioritize more affluent areas.

“It just feels to me on an intuitive level that [the closure] is pretty targeted against the people who shop there and whether they are people of color,” Shallan said.

Is it possible…just possible…that the correlation between affluence and stores remaining open has nothing to do with the racial makeup of the customers?

Stores in affluent areas, after all, also don’t get looted during riots and suffer from chronic, low-level looting every single day.

Just sayin’.

Target will close 9 stores do to looting and retail theft, all in democrat ran cities.
3 in San Francisco
3 in Portland
2 in Seattle
1 in New York City
Thoughts? pic.twitter.com/a8feUOuTrv

— • ᗰISᑕᕼIᗴᖴ ™ • (@4Mischief) September 28, 2023

It wasn’t that long ago that every person with a brain understood that civil society cannot function unless people behave like civilized human beings.

No longer. It is now understood, at least by those in the cultural elite, that the role of the middle classes is to tolerate the worst sort of behavior as a form of reparations to the “underprivileged.” After all, according to these people to whom we are meant to defer as our moral exemplars, the “underprivileged” are not to be expected to be anything but barbarians.

“Target’s closings because of crime protect its profit, but at expense of communities and customers.”

This is idiotic. Society exists because of a bargain: everybody is better off when everybody follows a set of rules. If you don’t, you can’t expect everybody else to sacrifice their own interests solely for your benefit.

Stores don’t exist to be looted. They exist to sell products. If, instead, those products are routinely stolen, the stores themselves routinely vandalized, and the employees of those stores are routinely assaulted, the stores will close. And should.

Communities aren’t being hurt by stores closing; they are being destroyed by barbarians who only think of themselves. No amount of excuse-making can change that fact. No amount of gaslighting that the looters are just trying to feed themselves can hide the fact that televisions, Apple cell phones, Gucci bags, and high-value items everywhere are being stolen, not food staples like bread.

If cities want to survive they must focus on reestablishing law and order. Most residents of these areas losing retailers don’t steal. They, more than the retailers, are the ultimate victims. Their communities are being ripped apart by crime.

Civilization is a choice. Most of us want it to continue, I think.

But perhaps not. After all, the politicians promoting this behavior keep getting reelected. So maybe not.