Target says it's closing 9 locations over crime, but New York City crime stats surrounding its East Harlem store tell another story

• Target said last week it would close nine stores in four metro areas over rising retail crime.
• City crime stats show that shoplifting rates are higher near stores that are staying open.
• Of course, shoplifting is not as worrying to retailers as risks to shopper and employee safety.

When Target announced nine store closures, it gave a rationale that few retailers ever say out loud — theft.

While theft is frequently speculated as the cause for a store closure, companies rarely specifically note it.

Target's announcement came as a surprise to some at the retailer's East Harlem location in Manhattan, New York, including Djeneba Kone, a neighborhood resident who has shopped at the store since she was in middle school.

"Honestly, I think I'm being shocked," she said. "I always come here, so where am I going to go find the nearest Target?"

Recently, though, she's seen more products locked up and a larger security presence.

"It made shopping a lot harder when you have to wait for someone to come unlock the doors," she said. "I was hoping they would find a way to make it safer or improve or help the shoplifting."

Target has been especially outspoken about the impact of retail crime on its business.

In May, CEO Brian Cornell called theft an '"urgent issue" that was driving a $500 million increase in the company's missing inventory for the year. In August, he said store incidents with "violence or threats of violence" had more than doubled between January and August alone.

But publicly available crime stats do not appear to support the company's claim that incidents of nonviolent shoplifting or violent robberies are trending up. The data does not indicate that closing stores are in areas hit harder by shoplifting than nearby stores the company plans to keep open.

While city-level crime stats do not necessarily represent a comprehensive or conclusive picture of the challenges confronting retailers, similar data from New York, San Francisco, and Seattle complicate the explanation Target provided last week.

Jim Joice, a Target spokesperson, told Insider missing inventory, or "shortage," had nearly doubled since 2019, coinciding with a "dramatic" increase in fraud online and in stores. Joice declined to clarify statistics about specific stores or plans for new locations.

The East Harlem Target's crime stats

East Harlem, also known as Spanish Harlem or El Barrio, is in a corner of Manhattan stretching from the top of the Upper East Side to the waterway between Manhattan and the Bronx. The neighborhood has been a hub for Latin American culture, where you'll find ice carts on a hot summer day and vibrant murals.

Positioned in a large shopping plaza with multiple other retailers, Target's 117th Street address is a locus of shoplifting reports for the New York City Police Department's 25th Precinct, with more than 200 incidents of "larceny from a store" during the first six months of this year.

But when compared with other areas of Manhattan where stores are set to remain open, East Harlem hardly registers on a heat map of retail-crime reports.

The closest Target locations to that one — 795 Columbus Ave. and 150 East 86th St. — have somewhat higher incident counts, while the stats for its stores near Manhattan's international retail centers such as Times Square, Herald Square, and SoHo are in another league altogether.

The company plans to open a location on 125th Street — less than 2 miles from the East Harlem store.

When asked what she thought about the new store, Kone wasn't convinced it would be an improvement.

"That's not going to be safer than here," she said. "I don't even go to 125th because there's always something going on over there."

In Seattle, the two locations set to close do not stand out in terms of shoplifting reports compared with the three stores set to remain open, The Seattle Times found.

In San Francisco, another complicated narrative on crime

In San Francisco, a Target on Folsom Street location went viral earlier this year for its aisles of locked-down merchandise. It's set to close. But the crime rates near Target's Mission Street store are far higher, police-department data shows.

Interestingly, the Mission Street Target was also found to be largely responsible for a puzzling spike in San Francisco Police Department crime data in 2021, resulting from that store implementing a new phone-reporting system, rather than a September shoplifting spree.

Target is not the first to blame shoplifters for shuttering individual locations — especially in San Francisco.

The drugstore chain Walgreens made headlines when it cited organized retail crime as the reason it had to close five San Francisco stores in October 2021. The company doubled down in an earnings call in 2022, when its chief financial officer, James Kehoe, described "gangs that actually go in and empty our stores of beauty products."

But in the days after Walgreens' initial announcement, the San Francisco Chronicle reported shoplifting incidents at the closing stores were uncommon: The five stores saw, on average, fewer than two cases of shoplifting a month between 2018 and 2021, the Chronicle reported, citing police data.

Walgreens had been closing thousands of stores for years before it decided the fate of the five San Francisco locations. In 2019, the company said it planned to close about 200 stores to recoup $1.5 billion in expenses.

The company's explanation for the store closings unraveled over the subsequent two years. In January, Kehoe ultimately acknowledged that perhaps Walgreens had "cried too much" about organized retail crime.

Target's statement takes a stand on crime

"We cannot continue operating these stores because theft and organized retail crime are threatening the safety of our team and guests, and contributing to unsustainable business performance," Target wrote in the press release announcing the store closures.

Even if the stats tell a more-complex story, the statement got a lot of attention. And Target was able to highlight an issue it had long sought the public's support in addressing.

Concerns about the physical safety of shoppers and employees are growing. The risk of indiscriminate violence in retail locations is not something any company is going to take lightly.

"While we're doing all we can to address the problem, it's an industry and community issue that can't be solved by a single retailer," Cornell said in May. "That's why we're actively collaborating with legislators, law enforcement, and retail-industry partners to advocate for public-policy solutions to combat organized retail crime."