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WASHINGTON, D.C. – Today, the House Committee on Small Business is holding a full committee hearing titled “Crime on the Rise: How Lawlessness is Impacting Main Street America.”
Chairman Williams’ opening statement as prepared for delivery:
Good morning, and welcome to our first hearing of 2024. Today, we are going to focus on the negative impact of rampant crime on small businesses and what can be done to address it.
First, I want to thank our witnesses for being here with us today. We know your time is valuable, and we appreciate you choosing to spend it here.
On top of the economic challenges of inflation, supply chain disruptions, and an inability to find qualified workers, small businesses are facing another issue that has grown worse these past few years. I am speaking of course of out-of-control crime.
Crime deters potential customers from visiting areas where they feel unsafe, and many of our nation’s brick and mortar stores rely on casual foot traffic to survive. Areas that do not have adequate public safety measures in place are causing small businesses to think twice about investing in them.
In order to keep customers and employees safe, businesses are being forced to hire private security services. Unfortunately, many businesses are unable to pay for this expense, which shouldn’t be necessary in the first place.
Unfortunately, there are policy decisions making it harder for small businesses to deal with this new challenge. For example, last year the Mayor of Columbus, Ohio forced some small businesses to close early to protect against crime. Instead of focusing on the individuals committing the crimes, the mayor decided to force the business owners to limit the time of day they can work to earn a living. This is simply unacceptable.
Additionally, we are seeing many metropolitan areas institute cashless bail. This allows repeat offenders back on the streets to continue to commit crimes. The New York Times reported that in New York City, 327 people were collectively arrested over 6,000 times for shoplifting. This accounted for 1/3 of all shoplifting crimes in the city, which is particularly detrimental to small businesses.
This brings up a larger issue that we are seeing across the county. Rather than protecting the entrepreneurs that bet on themselves and take risks to open a business, criminals are being protected. The light on crime approach is allowing people to commit crimes without fear of repercussions or prosecution. Over the last few years there has been a rise in coordinated smash-and-grab crimes. To keep employees out of harm’s way, many companies are instituting policies to simply allow these actions to take place and let the criminals go free.
This not only creates an unsafe work environment for employees, but also strains the resources of law enforcement officers. In speaking with small businesses as we prepared for this hearing, we heard some businesses that have been told to stop calling the police to report shoplifting, because the police don’t have the capacity to stop these small dollar crimes. This is extremely troubling, and these small crimes quickly add up for small businesses. Capital One Shopping Research reported that theft cost the retail industry over $112 billion dollars in 2022 alone. This is enough to force many small businesses to shut their doors for good.
Even worse, a more evil and sinister form of crime has been on the rise the last few months – antisemitic hate crimes.
After the attack on Israel, the U.S. saw an onslaught of antisemitic rhetoric. Since early October, attacks on Jewish people and businesses in the U.S. are up over 400 percent.
All across the country, Jewish businesses are being sent hate mail, vandalized, and attacked because of their religious beliefs. As elected officials, I hope we can all stand together to call out these heinous actions.
Crime remains a top problem for many job creators across the country. Main Street should not feel like it is under siege from criminals who have no fear of the law or consequences.
Our nation’s primary job creators deserve better. They deserve to know when they open their doors for business, they will not come under attack by violent wrongdoers who are out to destroy their livelihoods. Prosecutors need to prosecute, and police need to be allowed to police their communities.
I’d like to once again thank our witnesses for being here with us, and I look forward to today’s discussion. It is my hope we can find some common ground as to how best to help our nation’s small businesses during this time.
With that, I will yield to our distinguished Ranking Member from New York, Ms. Velázquez.
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