If the residents of Pine Bluff, Arkansas want police protection, they can go to the new Wal-Mart supercenter to get it. According to the Pine Bluff Commercial newspaper, there is going to be a police officer 24 hours a day at the Wal-Mart on South Olive Street. “It was ridiculous that a community of 55,000 didn’t have access to 24-hour police services,” Police Chief Danny Moses told the newspaper. “This is a big deal to me and to this department and it was something which was important for us to do.” The new police substation will be located near the grocery store entrance, the police said. “It will be easy to find because there will be a police unit parked near the door 24 hours a day,” authorities said. The newspaper article did not mention the cost of the new substation to local taxpayers, or how many police incidents orginate from Wal-Mart. But presumably the substation was put at Wal-Mart to cut down on the costly back and forth of sending officers to process police incidents that take place at the retailer. Is this new substation for the convenience of residents, or for the convenience of Wal-Mart?
Police in a number of communities across the country have complained that criminal activity at Wal-Mart, ranging from simple shop-lifting, to murder and rape, is a costly and growing problem. Wal-Mart has faced lawsuits from shoppers who were seriously assaulted or abducted from Wal-Mart parking lots. Most Wal-Mart crime occurs in parking lots, and a number of the more serious cases have been described in the book “Slam Dunking Wal-Mart.” The company does not often talk about crime in their stores, but some communities have complained about the unexpected cost of providing police services to Wal-Mart. For more stories on this subject, search this database by “crime.”
