Nike Closing Flagship Portland Store Due to Crime

The Oregon-based sports shoe giant Nike has announced it will close its flagship store in Portland for safety and security reasons.  Kristine de Leon of the Oregonian reports that last February Mayor Ted Wheeler turned down the company’s request to dispatch off-duty police officers to the store, which opened in 1984, to beef up security in the crime-ridden Northeast Portland business district.  Wheeler said that an officer shortage at the city’s police department was the reason.  Portland was at the center of the defund-the-police movement spearheaded by Black Lives Matter during the George Floyd riots in 2020.  Since then officers have retired or moved to other counties leaving the city with the smallest police force in 30 years.  Crime in the city has skyrocketed since the riots, setting homicide records over the past two years.  Nike was a major contributor to Black Lives Matter.