Another Chicago staple is shutting its doors, this time not because of lack of demand but because of the city’s growing theft epidemic.

Walgreens announced it will close its South Side location on June 4 after losing more than one million dollars in a single year, a loss executives say is directly linked to rampant theft and falling prescription sales.

It is another blow to a neighborhood that is losing access to essential services, and more evidence that Chicago’s soft on crime leadership continues to fail its residents.

At a community town hall, Walgreens regional Vice President Reginald Johnson explained that closing stores is a “last resort.”

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Yet the reality is that the company could not sustain what he described as “theft at this store is 16 percent, four times above the company average.”

In other words, no business could survive these conditions for long, not even a billion dollar pharmacy chain.

The company revealed that it poured hundreds of thousands of dollars into security but could not get the chaos under control.

From lock boxes for merchandise to additional guards, every measure was met with vandals who simply found new ways to steal. Lock boxes were destroyed.

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Security guards were overrun. Even with a yearly security bill of about four hundred thousand dollars, theft and threats toward employees persisted.

District manager Jason Vasquez told Fox 32 that the cost to replace destroyed lock boxes was “a great cost to the company.”

But the financial hit tells only half the story. Store manager Lonnie Fuqua described a workplace where employees were routinely harassed and even assaulted.

“We’ve had people jump across the counters, because we sell liquor behind the counter, taking liquor, cigarettes,” Fuqua explained.

The constant threat drained workers’ energy and morale. “That wears down. Not so much the financial piece but the endurance of that day in and day out,” he said.

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Despite Chicago leaders promising progress on crime, these incidents are becoming all too common.

Businesses are quietly closing one store at a time, especially in minority neighborhoods that politicians claim to champion.

The employees and customers left behind are the ones paying the price. Residents expressed frustration that they will now have to travel farther to pick up prescriptions.

Seniors and families who depend on that particular location are left wondering how they will manage when another neighborhood service disappears.

Walgreens said customers can transfer their prescriptions to another store about one mile away and that seniors will be offered free delivery on some medications.

Fuqua said the company has begun sending letters and emails to notify customers about mail delivery options.

“For seniors, there’s some solutions that have been put in place where you’ll get free delivery. That has already started for those medications you may have that, under the law, can be delivered,” he said.

While those measures may soften the blow, they do little to address the real problem. Walgreens executives did not close this store because of corporate restructuring or bad management.

They closed it because theft and lawlessness made it financially impossible to stay. And it is not just one rogue store suffering.

The company is in the process of closing about twelve hundred stores nationwide, many in cities dealing with similar crime surges and failing policies that put criminals before law-abiding citizens.

Residents of Chicago’s South Side are no strangers to broken promises from city hall.

Mayor Brandon Johnson, who is busy leading a coalition of left-leaning mayors, seems more interested in lobbying for federal bailouts than protecting neighborhoods from the daily crime and economic collapse happening right before his eyes.

Meanwhile, businesses like Walgreens, which provide critical services and jobs, are retreating.

This closure should alarm city leaders, but few expect meaningful change.

Each closure sends a loud message about the real cost of ignoring rising crime.

When stores cannot operate safely, they pack up and leave.

The tax base shrinks, unemployment climbs, and communities lose convenience and safety all at once.

For Walgreens, the Chicago closing is another item on a growing list of cost-cutting measures to offset losses.

But for local residents, it is one more symbol of the city’s decline under leadership that refuses to hold criminals accountable.

Big retailers have been raising red flags for years, warning that unchecked theft fueled by lax prosecution is devastating stores. The response from city officials has largely been to shrug or make excuses.

The Walgreens exit from Cottage Grove is not an isolated case. It is the predictable outcome of a city choosing politics over public safety.

Each broken lock box, each brazen theft, and each apology from city leaders unable or unwilling to enforce the law adds up to a simple truth: businesses cannot survive where law and order is optional.

Until city hall decides to take that seriously, expect more “last resorts” like this one across Chicago.

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