On Dec. 7, Making Change at Walmart (MCAW) announced the launch of a multifaceted media campaign that will call attention to the amount of shoplifting and other petty crimes that occur at Walmart stores, and the use of police resources to deal with the crime.
The new ad campaign, which will run first in Tampa, Fla.; Tulsa, Okla.; St. Paul, Minn.; and Dallas, Texas, highlights the troubling rate of local police calls, the impact on local police departments, and the failure of Walmart to use its $14 billion in profits to address these security issues at its stores.
As part of this new campaign, MCAW and local community partners will be calling on Walmart to disclose its internal crime database and individual store risk scores to provide employees, customers, and their communities the information they need to hold Walmart accountable for security funding decisions.
“Walmart must stop asking local police departments to do their job, and taxpayers to subsidize its security,” said Randy Parraz, campaign director of MCAW. “This is not an issue of whether Walmart can do more, it is about why they are putting profits ahead of the community. The simple solution is for Walmart to do what is right and invest more in under-staffed stores and security.”
“If Walmart truly cares about our local communities, the stores’ customers and employees, they would make this database available to the American people,” added Parraz.
As part of an effort to change Walmart for the better, the campaign also held a series of grassroots actions in over 20 cities across the country to distribute an educational flyer.
You can watch the Tulsa, Okla., version of the PSA-style commercial here.
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