Study Suggests Retail Center Could Deliver Surge in Crime

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Since the opening of super-centers in their towns, police chiefs across the country have voiced surprise at the steep increase in calls for assistance to their departments, according to the study, which was authored by WakeUpWalMart.com, a public awareness platform funded by national labor unions.

"If we had known the number of calls (from Wal-Mart), we probably would have considered an increase in officers" before signing off on the development proposal, stated the police chief of North Lebanon, Pennsylvania, a town with a population of 11,000.

The chief of a much smaller 2,500-resident town in Pennsylvania told the study’s authors that Wal-Mart "has completely changed the way we do business. It has overwhelmed us." He added that town tax revenues from the super-center did not come close to covering the higher costs incurred by his department.

The study points out that super-centers have a substantial impact not only on the number of calls to law enforcement, but on the severity of the crimes reported as well.

A large Wal-Mart store in the Albany suburb of Bethlehem has led to an increase in the number of serious criminals drawn to the super-center, including "gang members, drug addicts and thieves," according to a report by the Albany Times-Union, which tallied nearly 12,000 police responses to the store since its opening in 2004.

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The developer of the Bethlehem store "was extremely low on his estimate" of calls from the Wal-Mart, the town’s police chief recently told the Times-Union.

The 4,200-resident town of Greenport, which spends roughly $130,000 annually on its own part-time police department and on patrols by state and county officers, would be faced with substantially higher budgets for law enforcement if the study’s estimate of 250-300 additional calls from a large Wal-Mart store alone prove accurate.

With a super-center accounting for less than half of Widewaters 550,000 square feet of rentable space, the mall would likely require additional police services to meet the demands of its other retail tenants. Moreover, most observers expect the new plaza to draw sales and merchants from the neighboring shopping plazas along Route 9, raising concerns that many current stores would be left vacant and could themselves become magnets for crime.

Despite repeated requests, Greenport officials have refused to provide details on police costs and call volumes in their town, which already hosts four shopping centers on Route 9, including a 75,000-square-foot Wal-Mart store.

If the trends identified in the "Wal-Mart and Crime" report and in similar studies prove relevant, the town will see a dramatic rise in public safety costs and may have to convert its current part-time police effort into a much more costly full-time department.

With ample evidence linking large-scale retail development to steep increases in law enforcement budgets, it would seem sensible for the Greenport Town Planning Board to enlist independent experts to estimate the particular demands that the Widewaters project, if approved, would place on the town’s police resources and on its taxpayers.