Portland retailers struggle with shopping growth

Portland hours. (KPTV) – Portland enterprises feel the weight of increasing the stealing theft, a problem that has only aggravated from the pandemic. For some, the losses were too much to bear.

In the last year, the main traders like target and Rei has closed the stores in Portlandciting unsustainable crime levels.

Smaller enterprises are not much better.

For Nicole Whitesell, theft has become an inevitable part of the activity. She owns Adorn, a boutique with several locations around Portland. There were four stores until it closed its location in the city center, after repeated breaks.

“Emotional stress has been too much,” she said.

The show during working hours is another challenge, one for which Whitesell does not see any real solution.

“We can say it is a lost cause,” she said. “You can’t do anything.”

FOX 12 investigates crime data and found that the reports reported in Portland have tripled for almost three years, reaching 10,000 cases in 2024. And a company is at the center of all.

The data show that more than 5,000 cases of sale – over half of all reports – are based on new seasons locations in 2024. Three of the chain stores reported each theft over 1,000 times last year.

New Seasons refused an interview, but told Fox 12, in a statement, that the large number is due to its reporting policy, rather than a hint that they have more theft than other retailers.

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Adam Schenker, former prosecutor who is now working on behalf of major traders such as Walgreens, Target, Whole Foods and Fred Meyer, says that the actual number of theft cases is probably higher.

“Clearly speaking, it is probably underreporting the amount of crime that comes out of the stores,” Schenker said. “Several of the retailers I work with have more than a dozen crimes one day.”

The problem, he says, is that local law enforcement and prosecutors do not have enough resources to cope with retail crime at its current scale.

“If the system would work better, it wouldn’t need me,” he said. “But it is not.”

For the owners of small businesses, the lack of response is even more frustrating.

Whitesell remembers a certain entry-by-one input called the police while the suspects were still hitting other stores on her street.

“He could catch them if he could get here,” she remembered.

But the police never arrived. On average, shopping and robbery calls in Portland have a response times over an hour – if an officer is shipped at all.

“I feel we are here trying to do our best, trying to be a positive impact,” Whitesell said. “And the support for retailers feels very small.”