American cities “have abdicated their responsibility in fighting crime,” said Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz, who is a Democratic donor.
“I must say, in my view at the local, state and federal level, these governments across the country and leaders, mayors and governors, city councils have abdicated their responsibility in fighting crime and addressing mental health,” Schultz said in a video posted on Twitter.
Earlier in the week, Starbucks announced store closures in four Democrat-run states and the District of Columbia.
Breitbart News reported on the development:
The Starbucks Corporation announced … that it is closing 16 stores in the U.S. because of safety concerns for workers, including incidents of violence and drug use on the premises.
The coffee retailer will close permanently six stores in Seattle, Washington, and six more in the Los Angeles, California, region. Two stores will shutter in Portland, Oregon, and one store each in Philadelphia and Washington, DC.
Schultz spoke at an internal company gathering.
“We’re going to have to refine and transform and modernize many of the things we do to meet the needs of our customers in a very changing operating environment in which customer behavior is changing,” Schultz said.
Schultz said America is now “unsafe.”
“I don’t have to spend too much time on what’s going on in the country and how America has become unsafe,” Schultz said. “But you all read the press release last couple of days about the fact that we are beginning to close stores that are not unprofitable.”
“And then we heard the stories that go along with it about what happens in our bathrooms; the issue of mental illness, the issues of homelessness and the issues of crime,” Schultz said.
“Starbucks as a window into America, we have stores in every community and we are facing things in which the stores were not built for. And so we’re listening to our people and closing stores and this is just the beginning,” Schultz said.
“There are going to be many more,” he said.
Reporting from Breitbart.
