Walgreens Exits Chicago South Side After Rampant Shoplifting

The conversation about Walgreens leaving the South Side should be plain: businesses left because the store could not operate profitably amid rampant theft, threats and falling customer traffic, and if we want stores back we must change the conditions that drove them away.

When a long-running store shuts its doors, the knee-jerk narrative is often that some corporation chose profit over people. That sells headlines and stokes anger, but it rarely explains why the doors actually close. Facts on the ground matter more than slogans.

At the Cottage Grove location the losses were staggering, with more than a million dollars taken in a single year and hefty security costs that still failed to stop constant grab-and-runs. Stores do not survive when the cost of doing business outstrips sales and customers stop coming because they do not feel safe. In a system driven by customers and balance sheets, that math determines whether a business stays or packs up.

I watched this happen in my own neighborhood when the Walgreens by my church shut down and the McDonald’s across the street closed too. Those were not abstract losses; they were everyday conveniences and paychecks walking away. Blaming a company for responding to an impossible situation ignores the people and actions that created it.

Some leaders have pushed a theatrical response instead of practical solutions. Ald. William Hall called for charging Walgreens with “first-degree corporate abandonment” and even used the phrase “pharmaceutical genocide.” He said, “It should be a crime, the way they’re treating our elders … it should be a crime, the way they’re treating our families.” Those lines grabbed attention, but they do not explain why the store was hemorrhaging money.

Where was the same outrage when theft was happening every day inside that store? Where was the call to protect the pharmacy when thieves made a living emptying shelves? Charging the company for leaving without asking why keeping the business there became impossible puts the blame in the wrong place.

When the Walgreens near my church closed, we had to organize carpools for elderly members and neighbors who relied on that store for prescriptions and basic supplies. People with diabetes and heart disease suddenly faced longer trips to get necessary medication. That is not a theoretical harm; it is a real, immediate cost that fell on everyday families.

Stealing from a neighborhood store is not an act of solidarity. Those who treated the store like a free-for-all did not think about the mothers looking for formula or the seniors who depend on routine. Crime that targets the very places people rely on is self-destructive, and it accelerates the loss of services for everyone.

We also have to reckon with jobs that evaporate when businesses leave. The people who worked behind those counters were neighbors who lived here and spent their paychecks here. Once a company shutters a location, the ripple effects hit rent payments, grocery bills and family budgets.

There is a broader cultural vein to this problem: a tendency to find excuses instead of insisting on personal responsibility. Yes, poverty and broken systems create pressures. But acknowledging root causes does not erase the decision to steal or the choice to intimidate staff. Personal responsibility still matters.

It is politically easy to scream about corporate greed while ignoring conduct that chases commerce away. It is harder to admit that some community members have contributed to the problem. Facing that truth does not mean ignoring systemic issues, but it does mean holding people accountable for decisions that harm neighbors.

If we want retail, pharmacies and restaurants to return, guilt trips will not do it. Businesses look for stability, predictability and customers who will shop without fear. When those basic signals are missing, corporate lawyers and CFOs see only risk and loss, not promises or pleas.

Our grandparents fought to be welcomed into stores and to be treated like customers, not second-class citizens. That progress is fragile when neighborhoods allow crime to take the place of commerce. Respect for institutions and for each other is part of what makes investment viable.

I am not defending corporations that act callously. I am saying that in many cases the choice to leave came after sustained and costly pressure from theft and disorder. Naming that reality matters if we want different results.

Businesses will return when this place is worth their capital and labor. That means protecting customers and employees, patronizing local stores, and teaching a simple lesson: a neighborhood that destroys its own sources of care and work will lose them. The last question to ask after a closure should be: Why did we abandon Walgreens?