On Saturday, the retail giant Walmart announced that it would be closing down all of its remaining locations in the city of Portland, Oregon due to the rising crime wave that has swept over the city, and the subsequent financial problems the company has faced as a result.
As reported by Breitbart, the company said in a statement that “we have nearly 5,000 stores across the U.S., and unfortunately some do not meet our financial expectations.”
“While our underlying business is strong, these specific stores haven’t performed as well as we hoped,” the company added.
Two such locations, in Hayden Meadows and East Port Plaza, will close permanently on March 24th. The combined total of 580 workers at the two stores will be allowed to transfer to Walmart locations outside the city to continue work.
Walmart CEO Doug McMillon warned in a previous interview that the rising tide of theft, particularly shoplifting and outright looting, could lead to many stores being forced to close in certain dangerous cities and locations.
“Theft is an issue,” said McMillon. “It’s higher than what it has historically been.”
Other retail chain executives have issued similar warnings, including Target CFO Michael Fiddelke, who said in November that “there’s a handful of things that can drive shrink in our business and theft is certainly a key driver.”
However, when a Walmart spokesman was asked about McMillon’s comments in the wake of the closure of the Portland stores, he claimed there was not any one particular reason for the closures.
“We do a thorough review of how a store performs and weigh many factors before making the difficult decision to close a facility,” the spokesman said.
In the aftermath of the 2020 race riots by the far-left domestic terrorist groups Antifa and Black Lives Matter, shoplifting, looting, and vandalism have been on the rise in major cities. Numerous videos went viral depicting many big-name stores, from Nike to Target, being looted by rioters en masse, often in the dead of night. However, Democrat-led cities such as Portland have seen their leaders embrace crime by loosening laws and punishments for certain crimes, and cracking down on police enforcement.
As a result, a survey of the Portland Police Bureau (PPB) in February of 2022 discovered that there was “low morale” among the remaining police officers in the aftermath of the 2020 riots and the city’s refusal to crack down on crime. Many other businesses have also begun fleeing the city or shutting down completely out of fear of vandalism and theft; one such business that may soon shut down is a longtime ice cream shop named Salt & Straw.