A clothing store in Portland, Oregon, has permanently closed due to break-ins and rampant theft in the city.
Portland, along with many other large American cities, has seen a concerning amount of robbery and theft in recent years and many small businesses are shutting down as a result.
A note posted on the store’s front door explained that the store will no longer be open, the note was shared by KATU 2. Among other things, the sign shares this jarring anecdote.
Our city is in peril. Small businesses (and large) cannot sustain doing business, in our city’s current state. We have no protection, or recourse, against the criminal behavior that goes unpunished. Do not be fooled into thinking that insurance companies covered the loss. We have sustained 15 break-ins… we have not received any financial reimbursement since the 3rd.
This account sounds nothing like what we would expect from a booming first-world country like the United States and sounds even more unalike what should be happening in our largest cities.
Marcy Landolfo, the owner of the store, named Rains PDX, spoke to KATU 2.
Most interestingly, she explained why she was closing the store before the holiday shopping season concluded.
It’s just too much with the losses that are not covered by insurance, the damages, everything. It’s just not sustainable.
The products that are being targeted are the very expensive winter products and I just felt like the minute I get those in the store they’re going to get stolen.
According to Landolfo, she contacted the cities mayor after a break-in last month to ask what he planned to do to help heal small businesses.
The mayor, Ted Wheeler, indicated that he was working toward increasing a fund to help small businesses pay for repairs to their buildings in the aftermath of such raids.
Landolfo says that is not enough.
Paying for glass, that’s great, but that is so surface and does nothing for the root cause of the problem, so it’s never going to change.
According to the Portland government website, there have been 66,227 crimes reported in the last year in the city. The bulk of that number comes from nearly 30,000 cases of larceny and another 12,000 motor vehicle theft claims.
According to New York Post writer Emma Colton, Portland has also seen a rise in homicide since 2020.
The city saw a 58% increase in homicides in 2020 compared to the year prior, and 2021 notched a 54% increase in homicides compared to the already violent and bloody 2020. The number of homicides in 2021 was a 238% increase from the numbers recorded in 2018.
Mayor Wheeler spoke about a shortage of police in a statement shared by KGW8 on September 1 of this year.
First responders need the tools, the resources, the training [and] the personnel to do their jobs effectively and safely. The reason that so many of our firefighters and police officers are so burned out is we’re asking them to do too much with the number of people we have on the streets. We’re asking way too much of them.
"*" indicates required fields