Except there is a reason, they overextended their real estate liabilities in urban areas & introduced a “Store Optimization Program” in 2017 & have since closed 750+ stores, according to SEC filings. Certainly possible shoplifting played a part but they’ve closed… 100s of stores
https://twitter.com/richardhanania/status/1449935614904725508
Mostly notably in NYC—where no such shoplifting justification was cited—where Walgreens closed 27% of their stores in 2020 vs 24% in SF. Walgreens closes stores all the time, for a host of reasons laid out in their corporate strategy -> s1.q4cdn.com/343380161/file…
No one is arguing Walgreens closed stores for the lolz, what’s being contested is they closed SF stores ONLY or LARGELY due to shoplifting. When asked by reporters and city officials to explain how this is the case and/or show evidence they get hostile and ignore the requests
Walgreens has tremendous incentive to embellish shoplifting as the ONLY reason (1) people are mad about the closings and corporations always blame anyone but themselves (2) they, like all large retailers, support harsher larceny laws, namely repealing prop 47
No one has ever doubted shoplifting is A factor, the narrative being presented in literally hundreds of headlines is that it’s the ONLY or DISPOSITIVE factor which doesn’t pass the basic sniff test. These decisions are rarely that pat and politically convenient
Again, mainline reporters from the SF Chronicle and SFGATE with no particular ideologically axed to grind—whose papers have been on the forefront of pushing the initial story—asked Walgreens for basic info on their internal economics and reasoning and they just ignored them 🤷♂️
Perhaps more details are forthcoming but in the meantime reporters are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, and ought to have done four month ago, which is ask basic questions and consider potentially ulterior motives of large corporations.
And anyone who doesn’t simply echo the retail lobby’s press release Official Narrative is viewed as suspect and off program and glib about the social costs inherent in large scale retail theft, all to further bully reporters into not doing the basic work of “crime” reporting
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