A Portland, Ore., coffee shop this week became the latest business to flee the area due to violence in the Democratic-run city.
Coava Coffee, which opened in 2017, announced its permanent shutdown on Monday, citing increased city crime, KGW reported. Employees say they "feel unsafe," as crime targeting Portland businesses increases.
"People feel unsafe, and it’s pretty traumatizing," one Coava Coffee employee said, recalling broken windows and a chair thrown at the building during business hours.
In a statement posted on Instagram, Coava Coffee called the crime employees face "not a situation we can manage." The business detailed "extreme violence" employees have witnessed, "from theft, to physical displays of violence, threats of harm, break-ins, window smashing, and repeated traumatic in-cafe incidents."
The small business advocacy group Bricks Need Mortar found that from a survey of 118 Portland businesses, 79 percent said that in 2022 their business had been broken into or vandalized, compared with 63 percent in 2021.
The Portland coffee shop joins other businesses across the nation closing locations in Democrat-run cities due to rampant crime. Whole Foods announced the closing of its San Francisco location because of "deteriorating street conditions around drug use and crime."
In July, Starbucks closed 16 locations across the country, including in Democratic cities like Seattle, Los Angeles, Portland, Philadelphia, and Washington, D.C. Starbucks executives said employees need to "feel safe at work" in order to serve the area.
Data from the U.S. Attorney’s Office revealed that two-thirds of people arrested in D.C. never receive criminal charges.
Walmart shut down four out of its eight Chicago locations due to unprofitability as rampant crime forces other companies out of the city. Walmart temporarily closed all of its Chicago locations in 2020 during the Black Lives Matter riots in the city.