Research published this week by the Tampa Bay Times reveals stunning statistics from 2014: 53 Wal-Mart stores in 3 Florida Counties (Hillsborough, Pasco, and Hernando) generated a paddy wagon caravan of 16,800 police reports in one year alone.
That’s two calls an hour, every hour, every day. “The calls eat up hours of officer’s time,” the newspaper reports. “They all start at one place.” One sheriff told the newspaper, “It is a tremendous strain on manpower.”Gee? Really?
Let's get this straight, the Waltons, the world's most wealthy and miserly billionaire family pulls in huge profits while straining the resources of the towns and states where their big box hells reside. And then it appears that they further use up more resources because they don't hire proper security and the stores are laid out in a way to almost encourage theft?
"A dozen years later, not much has changed. The Tampa Bay Times calculates that Wal-Mart, on average, produce four times as many calls as nearby Target stores. The newspaper said the retailer has been criticized “for shifting too much of its security burden onto taxpayers. Several local law enforcement officers also emphasized that all the hours spent at Wal-Mart cut into how often they can patrol other neighborhoods and prevent other crimes.”
Four times the number of cars as another local big box store but one that actually hires enough security to protect their property. Walmart's only too happy to foist those costs off as much as possible so as to extract every last half penny of profit they can.
Yet another reason why you will never see me spend a penny in Walmart. Not that I needed any additional reasons but more ammo's rarely a bad thing!