Indiana Mayor Deems Local Walmart Public Nuisance

Beech Grove, Indiana Mayor Dennis Buckley says a local Walmart (NYSE:WMT) is a public nuisance after incidents at the store resulted in responses from the city’s police force. In an interview on FOX Business Network’s The Intelligence Report with Trish Regan, Mayor Buckley explained his decision.

“Walmart Beech Grove is draining our police resources… it’s the string of terrible events that have been occurring down there over the past two months that has led me to instruct our police chief to declare the Walmart a public nuisance,” Buckley said.

The mayor said the instances did not involve citizens from Beech Grove.

“That’s not our population. They are putting our city and its residents in a bad light. My defense is that these are people who do not live in Beech Grove that are coming into Beech Grove and causing problems. I think Trish, that Walmart needs to do a better job of watching who comes in their store and what they do when they get in that store.” Buckley added, “they need to have a police presence and they’ve already started doing it. There needs to be off-duty police officers.”

When asked if his city should be providing the police, Buckley said, “no absolutely not. [Walmart] should monitor the inside of their store.”

Despite being labeled as a public nuisance, Buckley said he doesn’t think Walmart would leave Beech Grove.

“I don’t think that would happen at all. I think [Walmart] could be a very good corporate citizen if they do some things that we ask them to do.”