The July 12 closure of the Ashford Dunwoody Road Walmart Supercenter will not only decrease customer traffic to the Perimeter Village shopping center, but will also significantly cut down on the twice-daily police presence at the store.
Walmart, citing underperforming sales, announced that the store would be closingalong with another location in Marietta.
“This decision was not made lightly and was reached only after a careful and thoughtful review process,” Walmart said in the statement. “We have nearly 5,000 stores across the U.S. and unfortunately some do not meet our financial expectations. While our underlying business is strong, this store hasn’t performed as well as we hoped.”
That statement has confounded many regular shoppers, who opine that the real reason behind the store’s closing is the lack of customer service and frequent incidents of shoplifting and other low-level crimes.
The fact that there are two prime parking spots in front of the store that are exclusively reserved for police vehicles speaks volumes. The assumption of frequent criminal presence is backed by facts.
Statistics pulled from Dunwoody Police call records from January 2023 to May 2024 reveal that authorities were called an average of twice a day for mostly low-level criminal activities like shoplifting, disorderly conduct, solicitation, panhandling, and civil disputes.
Authorities say that reports of criminal activity at the Ashford Dunwoody location is second only to incidents at Perimeter Mall.
During 2023, officers were called to the Walmart Supercenter 670 times and for the first five months of 2024, more than 300 times – averaging more than 55 events a month in 2023 and 63 in 2024. While some of the calls involved routine checks of the parking lot or store interior, the vast majority involved some sort of citation or arrest, Dunwoody Police said.
For example, on July 1, 2023 alone, police handled five calls to Walmart: three incidents of shoplifting, a civil dispute, and a report of a suspicious person. On July 18, four shoplifting incidents were reported between the hours of 4 to 7 p.m.
Dunwoody Police Sgt. Michael Cheek, who patrolled the area from June 2011 to February of 2022, said calls to the center have been “significant,” not just in terms of volume, but the amount of time officers must take in investigating, processing and transporting suspects to jail.
“”From the call to the investigation to taking them to the [DeKalb County] jail and then back to the city is at least two to- two-and-a-half hours on a good day,” Cheek said. “Now that we have two prison transport officers, that time has been cut down a little, but it is still a lot of time to be out of pocket.”
Cheek remembered a personal experience he had while serving as a patrol officer, when he answered a shoplifting call that escalated to an almost all-day event.
“We went on a call, and during the investigation, we witnessed another shoplifting in progress, then another, then another and another,” Cheek said. “There were four police cars in front of the Walmart when we caught the fifth guy, who said he thought we would be too busy [dealing with the other shoplifters] to pay any attention to him.”
He also recalled a string of thefts that involved a “brazen” group of people who regularly walked into the store, picked up flat screen televisions, and walked out of the store.
“And we aren’t talking about small TVs – they were picking up 50-inch and 60-inch ones and leaving,” he said. “They just didn’t care at all.”
He said traditionally the worst time for crime is during the period from Black Friday to the end of the year. Statistics supplied by Dunwoody show that from Nov. 24, 2023 to Dec. 31, 2023 show police were called to the Walmart 19 times for shoplifting, five for disorderly conduct, and three times each for soliciting, loitering, civil disputes, and panhandling.
Cheek said he believes the closure of the Walmart will only “relocate” the criminal element to other stores, including the Target, which is less than a mile away.
“We will be monitoring closely the area after the Walmart closes and the Target,” he said.