Safeway is closing one of its San Francisco stores due to concerns about high crime rates and employee and customer safety in that store’s neighborhood. Oh, the hue and cry.
The Reverand Erris Edgerly, for instance, is crying foul.
It’s obvious the community has been struggling, but to just up and leave without calling a meeting, with no alternative for groceries, is upsetting. There was no community outreach at all.
It’s obvious that the crime rate in Edgerly’s community has been out of control for quite some time and the safety of his community members has been in the wind for all that time. From that, it’s just as obvious that community “leaders,” like the good Reverand, have contributed nothing useful to mitigating the situation (in truth, the city has done nothing, also, but that doesn’t excuse the community’s “leaders”).
Outreach would have been just more chit-chat and worse than pointless: advance notice of the store’s closing would have been too likely to trigger an accelerated spate of break-ins and lootings, exposing the store’s employees and customers to even more danger in that end game.
Maybe the Edgerlys of the neighborhood should look in a mirror to find some of the folks with whom to…outreach.