Business

Baltimore Riot Damage Adds Burden to Small Businesses

Published

10 years ago

May 1, 2015

A man walks past the damaged Oxford Tavern on Thursday, April 30, 2015, in Baltimore. Richard Sung Kangs liquor store and bar was hit by looters Monday, during a riot over the police-involved death of neighborhood resident Freddie Gray. (AP Photo/David Goldman)

David Dishneau and Joyce M. Rosenberg, ASSOCIATED PRESS

BALTIMORE (AP) — Richard Sung Kang’s American dream came crashing down in a shower of broken glass.

His West Baltimore liquor store and bar, the Oxford Tavern, was hit by looters during a riot over the police-involved death of neighborhood resident Freddie Gray.

The business wasn’t torched like the nearby CVS pharmacy, but its doors and windows were broken and cash and inventory stolen, leaving shelves bare.

Now the 49-year-old South Korean immigrant must decide whether to reopen. If so, it could mean taking on more debt and paying higher insurance premiums.

“I don’t know yet,” said Kang, looking dejected and exhausted Wednesday after rioters damaged scores of businesses in pockets of the city.

About 200 small businesses were unable to open the day after the violence, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan said.

The predominantly black neighborhood around Kang’s store, which also includes CVS, took some of the worst of it. The area has already been abandoned by many businesses, with vacant storefronts on every block of North Avenue and many boarded-up homes on side streets.

Korean-Americans were particularly hard-hit: They run many small businesses in black neighborhoods in Baltimore, and there have been tensions between owners and residents.

In the 1990s, according to a 2004 study by the Maryland Advisory Committee to the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, there were complaints by residents over the quality of food sold in local stores, while owners expressed concerns about crimes targeting them and their businesses.

CVS Health Corp. is already making plans to rebuild the burned-out pharmacy, spokeswoman Carolyn Castel wrote in an email. She said the company doesn’t yet have a damage estimate to share, but said “we have a long history of serving inner-city communities and we remain committed to serving our patients and customers in Baltimore.”

Rebuilding after riots is difficult and sometimes impossible for small businesses because most don’t have the cash reserves of larger companies. Kang doesn’t even own a home. He said he got a bank loan to buy the bar last year, after working nearly 10 years in Maryland as a biochemical researcher.

“Everybody says America is a dream come true,” Kang said as locksmiths worked on his doors. “The most important thing is, I have to move on. But is it better to rebuild and start again or give up and find some other place? I don’t know.”

He said he was insured but didn’t know if his policy would cover his losses. Although damage from civil unrest is covered under standard business insurance policies, many businesses don’t have adequate coverage.

Insurance claims usually result in higher premiums, said Maryland Insurance Commissioner Al Redmer, Jr. He said insured losses from the riots will likely exceed $1 million.

About a half-dozen of the hundreds of insurers regulated by the commission have declared temporary moratoriums on accepting new business in affected areas, Redmer added. State regulations allow this, to protect consumers and taxpayers from attempts to take advantage of situations where the governor has declared a state of emergency or a special curfew is imposed — both true in this case.

Help may be forthcoming from the Small Business Administration, which has offered low-interest loans after civil unrest elsewhere, including Ferguson, Missouri, last year. Gov. Hogan, a Republican, said his administration will “do what we can” to get SBA loans for uninsured businesses.

Once the state formally requests help, the SBA would have to declare a disaster to make businesses eligible for loans of up to $2 million at 4 percent annual interest, said SBA spokeswoman Carol Chastang.

However, many business owners don’t want loans, Chastang said. They don’t want the burden of debt, and many, particularly small retailers, may not have the cash flow to make the payments.

Many companies would prefer grants, which they need not repay, but governments have little grant money available. Small businesses would have to hope that corporations or nonprofit organizations would make grants to help them recover.

Even companies that can rebuild face challenges. When a business is closed for an extended period, customers seek alternatives and may not return, said Jeffrey Robinson, a professor of entrepreneurship at Rutgers University.

The stigma attached to a riot-torn area is another obstacle for small businesses, making banks and investors uneasy about committing money, said Derek Hyra, a professor of public administration and policy at American University.

“It takes a long time in people’s collective memory to remember these are vibrant, safe communities worth investing in,” he said.

Many stricken businesses are owned by immigrants — about half by Koreans, Hogan said.

Pakistani immigrant Rashid Khan reopened his corner grocery store Wednesday with the front window still boarded up. Khan said he borrowed $25,000 from friends and relatives two years ago to open the store and will seek their help again to recover from the riot.

Customers were waiting to buy soda, cigarettes, milk and snacks when Khan unlocked his store Wednesday morning. Some said the next nearest place for milk was eight blocks away.

David Jones, 30, bought a can of orange soda, happy that Khan had reopened.

“It’s where you can go and get something to eat or drink,” he said.

Cities hit by riots in the 1960s have taken decades to recover. Rebuilding is still taking place in Newark, New Jersey, and Washington, D.C., and parts of Detroit have only recently started their recovery.

—–

Associated Press writers Brian Witte and Amanda Lee Myers contributed to this report. Rosenberg reported from New York.
Copyright 2015 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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Activism

‘Jim Crow Was and Remains Real in Alameda County (and) It Is What We Are Challenging and Trying to Fix Every Day,’ Says D.A. Pamela Price

“The legacy of Jim Crow is not just a legacy in Alameda County. It’s real. It is what is happening and how (the system is) operating, and that is what we are challenging and trying to fix every day,” said D.A. Price, speaking to the Oakland Post by telephone for over an hour last Saturday. “Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Published

5 hours ago

November 2, 2024

Oakland Post

Exclusive interview with County D.A. Price days before recall election. Photo by Ken Epstein.

By Ken Epstein

Part One

Alameda County District Attorney Pamela Price gave an exclusive in-depth interview, speaking with the Oakland Post about the continuing legacy of Jim Crow injustice that she is working to overturn and her major achievements, including:

restoring and expanding services for victims of crime,
finding funding for an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors and
aggressively prosecuting corporations for toxic pollution and consumer violations.

“Racial disparities in this county have never been effectively eliminated, and we are applying and training our lawyers on the (state’s) Racial Justice Act, and we’re implementing it in Alameda County every day,” she said.

Passed by the State Legislature, this law “is an extremely helpful tool for us to address the racial disparities that continue to exist in our system,” she said.

(The law addresses) “the racial disparities that we find in our juvenile justice system, where 86% of all felony juvenile arrests in the county are Black or Brown children.

“We trained the entire workforce on the Racial Justice Act. We are creating a data system that will allow us to look at the trends and to clearly identify where racism has infected the process. We know that where law enforcement is still engaging in racial profiling and unfair targeting and arresting, we’re trying to make sure we’re catching that.”

Many people do not know much about the magnitude of Alameda County District Attorney’s job. Her office is a sprawling organization with 10 offices serving 1.6 million people living in 14 cities and six unincorporated areas, with a budget this year of about $104 million.

Asked about her major achievements since she took office last year, she is especially proud of the expanded and renewed victims’ services division in the DA’s Office, she said.

“We have expanded and reorganized the entire claims division so that we are now expediting as much as possible the benefits that victims are entitled to. Under my predecessor, they were having to wait anywhere, sometimes as long as a year, to 400 days to get benefits.

“Claims had been denied that should not have been denied. So, we’re helping people file appeals on claims that were denied under her tenure,” D.A. Price said.

“Under my predecessor, (the victims’ service office) was staffed by people who were not trained to provide trauma-informed services to victims, and yet they were the only people that the victims were in contact with. We immediately stopped that practice,” she continued.

“We had to expand the advocate workforce to include people who speak Hmong, the indigenous language of so many people in this county who are victims of crime.”

More African Americans advocates were hired because they represent the largest percentage of crime victims and we hired a transgender advocate and advocates who speak Cantonese and Mandarin. “The predominantly Chinese American community in Oakland was not being served by advocates who speak the language,” said D Price

“We reduced the lag time from the delivery of benefits to victims from 300 to 400 days down to less than 60 days.”

She increased victim advocacy by 38%, providing critical support to over 22,500 victims, a key component of community safety.

Other major achievements:

She recently filed 12 felony charges against a man accused of multiple armed robberies, demonstrating her seriousness about prosecuting violent crimes
In October, a jury delivered a guilty verdict in the double murder trial of former Alameda County Sheriff’s Deputy Devin Williams, showing DA Price’s commitment to holding law enforcement accountable.
She recently charged a man and woman in unincorporated San Leandro with murder, felony unlawful firearm activity, and felony carrying a loaded firearm in public.
A. Price’s office was awarded a $6 million grant by the state for its CARES Navigation Center diversion program. In partnership with the UnCuffed Project at a Seventh Day Adventist Church in Oakland, the program provides resources and referrals for services to residents as an alternative to incarceration and/or prosecution for substance use and mental health-related misdemeanors.

“This is the largest grant investment in the history of the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office,” said D.A. Price.

She explained that the program now has a mobile unit. “We have washers and dryers. We have a living room. We have a television. It’s a place where people can decompress, get themselves stabilized,” she said.

The project has “the ability to refer people to housing, to more long-term mental health services, to social services, and to assist them in other ways.”

Her office joined in a $49 million statewide settlement with Kaiser Health Plan and Hospitals, resolving allegations that the healthcare provider unlawfully disposed of hazardous waste, medical waste, and protected health information. The settlement, which involved the state and a half dozen counties, resulted in Alameda County receiving $7 million for its residents.
DA Price charged a former trucking company employee for embezzling over $4.3 million, showing her commitment to tackling white-collar crime.
For the first time, Alameda County won a criminal grand jury indictment of a major corporation with two corporate officers that have been sources of pollution. “They had a record of settlements and pollution in this community, and they had a fire that constituted a grave danger,” she said.

Attorney Walter Riley contributed to this article.

See Part Two

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Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

The printed Weekly Edition of the Oakland Post: Week of October 30 – November 5, 2024

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1 day ago

November 1, 2024

Oakland Post

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Business

Chevron Reports Progress in Flaring, Emissions at Community Town Hall

At the first in a series of community town halls on Oct. 16, Chevron Richmond reported a reduction in year-over-year flaring incidents, both in number and duration, and detailed new technologies and processes that will further drive down emissions and heighten community awareness about operations. Chevron employees also answered questions from the community and listened to concerns at the town hall, which was hosted by Ceres Policy Research and held at CoBiz in downtown Richmond.

Published

5 days ago

October 28, 2024

Oakland Post

Community member Kathleen Sullivan speaks at the Chevron town hall. Photo courtesy Richmond Standard.

By Mike Aldax

The Richmond Standard

Chevron employees also answered questions from the community and listened to concerns at the town hall, which was hosted by Ceres Policy Research and held at CoBiz in downtown Richmond.

Similar town halls will be held twice per year over the next five years as part of a settlement agreement with the Bay Area Air Quality Management District (BAAQMD).

The goal is to increase transparency about flaring and increase opportunities for the community to get answers to their questions about potential impacts to the community.

A key output is the creation of a Community Action Plan, or CAP. The CAP aims to create a two-way dialogue between Chevron and neighbors around flaring and environmental compliance.

“Chevron’s focus in this process is one of learning and engagement,” said Brian Hubinger, public affairs manager at Chevron Richmond. “We felt the most efficient way was to bring together a broad selection of community members rather than just think about what it would take to comply with the settlement agreement.”

The first town hall drew a few dozen members of the community, including Chevron employees, representatives of fence-line neighborhoods and members of local environmental organizations.

During the event, Chevron employees reported that 19 BAAQMD-reportable flaring incidents occurred at the refinery from October 2022 to September 2023 with a total duration of 270 hours. During the same period this year, 18 flaring incidents occurred with a total duration of 159 hours, marking a 41% decrease in duration.

Further gains are expected with the implementation of Flare IQ, set to be installed this year and next on all of the refinery’s flaring systems. Flare IQ is described as a supercomputer with an algorithm that gathers data from operations and enables employees to address potential issues before they occur.

Chevron also reported a 40% decrease in particulate matter emissions since the completion of the refinery modernization project in 2018.

In addition, flare gas volume related to Chevron’s new hydrogen plant project, built as part of the modernization project, decreased by 85% since 2019. The hydrogen plant has also reportedly made the refinery 20% more efficient.

“We’re really proud about that,” said Kris Battleson, manager of health, safety and environment at Chevon Richmond.

Neighborhood council leaders joined the president of the local NAACP in lauding the effort toward transparency and accountability. Among them was Vernon Whitmore, president of the Sante Fe Neighborhood Council and member of the 15-person CAP committee.

“The way we were able to talk openly and freely with Chevron – honestly, bluntly and frankly – while developing this program was very good,” Whitmore said. “And it was something that was well-needed at this time.”

Still, residents are skeptical, including Kathleen Sullivan, a longtime community advocate who also serves on the CAP committee. But she added, “you can’t complain about something and not be involved in the solution.”