Weekly Walk Report - Thursday, April 19th

There was a light rain during yesterday's walk, so we decided to do a short litter pick up around Virgil Flaim Park. On Monday we found ~30 empties at the park and wanted to see what accumulated in the 3 days since. We found 56 empty alcohol containers, an empty Hydrocodone pill bottle ( with the name and addresses of the patient, doctor, and pharmacy ), a drug testing kit, and two makeshift heroin cook trays.

The park was empty except for a man drinking booze and hiding in the trees on the NE corner.

The glass bottles of Four Loko are new to the scene. We just started finding them. One DPC member confirmed that Grocery Outlet started selling these recently. Unofficial reports indicate that Grocery Outlet has been losing significant amounts of money to shoplifting which does not get reported due to a need to appear profitable to corporate. The cheap booze business model appears to be a viable option for those operating on thin profit margins - like gas stations and dollar stores.

Also on the topic of shoplifting, a DPC member recently talked with the manager of another large grocery retailer in the neighborhood to see if they were experiencing a shoplifting problem. The response was that the number of incidents was similar to the other store that he had managed, but that the items being stolen were very different in both price and quantity. They are stealing large quantities of high ticket items like batteries and laundry detergent ( specifically Tide. ) It was speculated that the volume of these items being stolen suggested there was an illegal market for them. Alcoholic beverages were shoplifted regularly and they installed cameras on that aisle.

The Voluntary Alcohol Ban that Deputy Mayor Darryl Smith is working on included working with businesses through the Office of Economic Development to develop viable business models that did not rely so  heavily on cheap booze as their profit drivers. No word as of yet when the Voluntary Ban will go into effect. We have sent requests to Darryl's office for updates and will post here as soon as we hear back.