Harvey Levy, President of Sports Mart, which was looted during riots in Baltimore on Monday claimed he had to resort to calling a local TV station to dispatch officers to his store and it took “about an hour” for one officer to show up on Wednesday’s “Your World with Neil Cavuto” on the Fox Channel.
Levy said, that “I think that the mayor had a tough decision to make in lieu of the Gray trial, and in lieu of the problems that they’ve had in the past, the violence in the city, I think she was between a rock and a hard place. She — I think she did the best she could, except I was a little disappointed that they didn’t activate the National Guard the day before doing — due to the violent nature of Baltimore’s history and with the Gray trial, I think that they could have been at least put on alert on on Sunday, and they could have hit the streets a lot sooner than they did. I didn’t see any national guard here until late Monday night, and by that time, my store was pretty much empty.”
He then told what he says happened on Monday night, stating “I was home at about 9:00 and I got that call that every businessman hates, puts an empty feeling in your gut, that your store alarms had gone off, and they called. And I went right to my webcam phone, and we have eight cameras here, and all my lights were on in the store, and I saw people running in the front door, and running out with boxes, and looting my store. I, you know, thought the police, we’re on the east side of town and all the police and everyone was on the west side of town, and I think it was a crime of opportunity here. They — they figured that there [was] no police presence here. We’re actually three blocks from Central District, and I kept waiting for the police to arrive, and I never saw anybody. And I started calling the police department, and I called one of the districts and they said, ‘well, call the other district.’ And I called the other district. Meanwhile, I’m watching probably 50 or 60 people loot my store, and I couldn’t get in touch with anyone. And finally they say, ‘well, call Central District.’ And I called Central District and no one answered, and it took me probably an hour to realize that nobody was going to answer the phone, and meanwhile I’ve been watching this video and it’s — it was gut wrenching to watch our business dissolve like that. And I finally called — they were doing a live interview in front of central police station, and she — and the anchor had several policemen behind him and I actually called the station, and said ‘if you can get a message to your — live personality if she could turn around and please tell one of the police officers that they’re taking about a million dollars worth of merchandise out of my store three blocks behind them.’ And I still got no response. There were no — the policemen finally called me about an hour later, and he was in my store, all the looters had gone, and he was sitting at the counter, and I saw him on the video cam, so I called the store and he answered and said he was a — policeman. And I said, ‘well, do me a favor and see, — you know, lock the back door’ because I could see they were still looting in the back door. This is a big warehouse, and he was in the front and he was sitting there and he said he has to leave, to please come down. I said, ‘I’m not coming down there.’ And he said, ‘well, we have to leave.’ And 15 minutes later I logged back on and he was gone and there [were] probably 150 people rampaging my store, and they worked their way through to open the back door, and they had probably 200 people coming in my back door and they were making trips in and out.”
He added, “I was watching my video till maybe 5:00, 5:15 on Tuesday morning, and there were still people in the store looting the store.”
Harvey concluded that despite all this, he is going to try to re-open his store.
Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett
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