Folks, I need you to sit down for this one because the sheer audacity of what I’m about to tell you might cause a medical event, and ironically, there won’t be a pharmacy nearby to help you. Chicago Alderman William Hall of the 6th Ward has announced — with a straight face and everything — that Walgreens should face criminal charges for closing its store on the South Side. For leaving due to high crime. The man wants to prosecute a pharmacy for not wanting to be robbed anymore.
Let that marinate. The same city that treats shoplifting like a minor inconvenience, the same political class that fought tooth and nail to make sure nobody gets prosecuted for walking out of a store with a garbage bag full of merchandise — THAT city now wants to criminally charge the store. The arsonist is demanding to know why the fire department let the building burn down. The guy who cancelled the lifeguards is furious that people are drowning. This is where we are.
Alderman Hall called Walgreens’ departure “mass abandonment of access to quality medicine.” Mass abandonment. Like Walgreens is a deadbeat dad who skipped town. Like a corporation has a moral obligation to stand in one spot and absorb unlimited financial losses while teenagers clean out the shelves on TikTok livestreams. Like the store owes it to the neighborhood to keep its doors open while the city refuses to keep criminals behind bars.
You know what’s actually mass abandonment? When your city’s leadership abandons the basic social contract that says if someone steals from a business, there will be consequences. When your prosecutors abandon their duty to enforce the law. When your politicians abandon common sense in favor of whatever viral nonsense gets them on cable news. THAT’S mass abandonment, Alderman. The pharmacy leaving is just the receipt.
Let’s walk through the beautiful, perfect, almost poetic logic of what happened here. Step one: progressive politicians in Chicago push policies that make it nearly impossible to prosecute shoplifting. Step two: shoplifting explodes. Step three: stores lose money hand over fist because their inventory keeps walking out the door in someone’s jacket. Step four: stores close. Step five: the same politicians who caused steps one through four demand the stores be punished for step four.
It’s a closed loop of stupidity, and Alderman Hall is standing right in the middle of it acting like he just discovered the problem.
Here’s what kills me. This man is an elected official. He has actual power. He could use that power to push for tougher enforcement against shoplifting. He could advocate for prosecutors who actually prosecute. He could work with police to increase patrols around businesses that are getting hammered by theft. He could do literally anything that addresses the reason Walgreens left. Instead, he wants to file criminal charges against the victim.
Imagine applying this logic anywhere else in life. Your house gets broken into every week. The cops won’t arrest anyone. The DA won’t prosecute. Your insurance drops you. So you move. And then your city councilman holds a press conference demanding YOU be charged with abandonment. You’d think you were living in a sketch comedy. But no. You’re living in Chicago.
And let’s talk about what “criminal charges” even means here. What’s the crime? Operating a business and then stopping? Is that illegal now? Is there a law that says once you open a Walgreens, you can never close it, even if it’s hemorrhaging money because the city has effectively legalized stealing from you? Someone show me that statute. I’ll wait.
This is the endgame of progressive criminal justice reform, by the way. This is where the road leads. You start by decriminalizing theft. Then businesses leave. Then you’re left with empty storefronts and no services. And instead of admitting you were wrong — because admitting you were wrong is apparently worse than living in a city with no pharmacies — you just find a new villain. The criminal isn’t the person stealing. The criminal is the store that got stolen from.
The residents of the 6th Ward deserve a pharmacy. They deserve access to medicine. They deserve a safe, functioning neighborhood. We agree on all of that. But they also deserve a politician honest enough to tell them WHY they don’t have those things. And the reason isn’t corporate greed. The reason is that their city made it profitable to steal and unprofitable to sell. That’s not a Walgreens problem. That’s a Chicago problem.
But sure, Alderman. File your charges. Take Walgreens to court. And when the judge asks what law they broke, you can explain that in Chicago, the only crime worse than stealing is trying to stop being stolen from.
We’ll be watching. With popcorn.
