Chicagoans are seeing a variation on the saying, “Don’t bite the hand that feeds you,” playing out in the city. Areas of the city are being labeled as “food deserts” because there are no grocery stores nearby, and residents only have themselves to blame.

According to ABC7 in Chicago, “In the past five years on the South Side, store closings have included a Whole Foods, two Targets and three Walmarts.” These are stores that would generally be considered too large to fail, but they are struggling with maintaining profitability.

When Walmart closed half its Chicago stores earlier this year, the company stated in a press release, “The simplest explanation is that collectively our Chicago stores have not been profitable since we opened the first one nearly 17 years ago -- these stores lose tens of millions of dollars a year, and their annual losses nearly doubled in just the last five years.”

Crime is so rampant in major cities like Chicago that shoplifting calls have become something police no long have the time to respond to. They are short-staffed and crime is growing virtually unchecked. Many store chains have policies for employees, including security, to not stop shoplifters for fear of the employee being hurt.

This invites criminals to take what they want, leaving the company to take the loss.

For those who say, crime is not a problem (and it is doubtful that most of the politicians in office would try to make this case anymore), look on the streets of the city and see what is happening. Hundreds of teens rioting, damaging property, and attacking people, for no reason other than they were encouraged to do so on social media.

The result is that stores in high-crime areas are dealing with a greater number of shoplifting incidents that police can’t respond to because they are short-staffed and shoplifting isn’t as important to them as dealing with a murder, rape, or assault.

It is important to the stores, though. Merchandise stolen is written off as loss, but that loss reduces the store’s profitability. Walmarts tend to have about a 6 percent profit, so if they can’t make it in Chicago, what chance do grocery stores that make around 2 percent in profit stand?

 They don’t, which is why they have been closing.

Yet, Chicago’s answer to the problem is not to let the police do their jobs and arrest criminals. No, the people who have already shown that they don’t know why there is a food desert in the city want more control over people’s lives.

The city government is considering creating city-owned grocery stores while not addressing the reason other stores have closed. This means that a city store would have to deal with high levels of shoplifting. The other choices for dealing with would be to raise the prices of products at the store, which residents of those areas would probably complain about. It would also drive more people to shoplift.

The other choice would be to raise taxes citywide to subsidize those stores.

Neither is a sustainable solution because neither deals with the problem. Instead, it places a Band-Aid (higher taxes) over an existing Band-Aid (city-owned stores).

If Chicagoans or even residents of other major cities want to see businesses return, then they have to make it attractive to operate in the city. Among other things, that includes making the city safe.

Yet, residents vote for politicians who do their best to minimize the police. In other words, they voted for food deserts.

Michael A. Letts is the CEO and Founder of In-VestUSA, a national grassroots non-profit organization helping hundreds of communities provide thousands of bulletproof vests for their police forces through educational, public relations, sponsorship, and fundraising programs. 

CONTACT: Jerry McGlothlin for Michael Letts 919-437-0001 jerry@specialguests.com.

Image: National Archives