Here’s Another Way Walmart Is Ripping Off Taxpayers (WITH VIDEO)

Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas (image courtesy Brandon Rush, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)
Walmart headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas (image courtesy Brandon Rush, available under a Creative Commons BY-SA license)

In the last few years, I can count on one hand the number of times I’ve set foot in a Walmart. This came after learning that the world’s biggest retailer pays its workers so little and makes health insurance so expensive that most workers are forced to go on public assistance just to live decently. In essence, Walmart is effectively forcing taxpayers to subsidize a large chunk of its expenses.

Well, a recent study by the Tampa Bay Times revealed that inadequate pay isn’t the only way Walmart is shafting the general public. Walmart employees are extremely quick to call the police–so quick, in fact, that many law enforcement experts and officers accuse Walmart of sticking taxpayers with the bill for store security.

Watch what Tampa Bay law enforcement usually has to deal with on calls to Walmart here.

The Times found that in 2014, law enforcement logged 16,800 calls to Walmarts in the four counties of the Tampa Bay metropolitan area. That’s 46 calls a day, and two calls per hour. Out of those calls, more than half were for things like trespassing, parking issues, and vagrancy. This could easily be handled by store security/loss prevention at other major chains. At Walmart, however, this expense is fobbed off on taxpayers. Additionally, many of the calls for theft involved items well below the threshold for grand theft in Florida. In many cases, police found themselves responding to Walmarts more than they did at larger malls.

In Port Richey, for instance, the police department fielded 450 calls from the local Walmart. One of those calls was for the theft of a $6.39 toothbrush. The entire process of investigating the theft, arresting the thief, booking him into jail, and completing the required paperwork took a total of 2.5 hours. By the police department’s reckoning, the 250 calls that led to arrests in 2014 ate up 500 man-hours. That’s a huge amount for any small-town department, but even more so when you consider that at times, there are only two officers on duty.

Assistant chief William Ferguson said that at the rate they have to respond to incidents at Walmart, his department effectively functions as “Walmart’s personal police transportation agency.” Tampa officer James Smith, a retail crime expert, says his department has to deal with similar problems. Even though Tampa police have to spend a large amount of time dealing with issues at Walmarts, they are more or less “at the mercy of what they want to do.”

A number of retail experts believe Walmart isn’t doing enough on its own to maintain order at its stores. When Charles Fishman, author of “The Wal-Mart Effect,” a book about Walmart’s social impact on the country, saw the Times’ figures, he likened Walmart to a parent who calls the police every time a child acts out. Retail consultant Burt Flickinger believes that Walmart forces police to take care of problems that would easily be dealt with by management and store security at other chains.

According to University of South Florida professor and criminology expert Wesley Jennings, Walmart has two problems. Not only are there few uniformed employees patrolling the stores, but Walmart’s overall design makes it too easy for thieves. A typical Walmart has little open space, and a number of places where sightlines are blocked. Jennings thinks this creates a sense of “chaos” that lets thieves think they can get away with it.

One obvious solution would be to hire more uniformed security guards, or at the very least let off-duty cops work security details. It’s long been proven that the presence of a uniformed guard acts as a strong deterrent–without putting a burden on taxpayers. However, of the 53 Walmarts in Tampa Bay, only five have uniformed guards at the entrance. Another solution would be to have more employees patrolling the aisles. Target, for instance, logged just a fraction of the calls logged at Walmart–in part because, according to Flickinger, there are more uniformed employees keeping an eye on things.

Hopefully, more agencies will take the line of the police department in Beech Grove, Indiana; it threatened to fine Walmart up to $2,500 for each small shoplifting call. Otherwise, it will only be a matter of time before a tragedy takes place in a town where it’s essentially Walmart or nothing–all because the police are chasing down picayune incidents at the local Walmart.

Darrell is a 30-something graduate of the University of North Carolina who considers himself a journalist of the old school. An attempt to turn him into a member of the religious right in college only succeeded in turning him into the religious right's worst nightmare--a charismatic Christian who is an unapologetic liberal. His desire to stand up for those who have been scared into silence only increased when he survived an abusive three-year marriage. You may know him on Daily Kos as Christian Dem in NC. Follow him on Twitter @DarrellLucus or connect with him on Facebook. Click here to buy Darrell a Mello Yello.