An alarming trend in ST an alarming trend in St Louis in Saint St Paul Minnes as robberies spike more than thirty two percent in twenty twenty, our next guest says his restaurant was robbed five times in the last few months. He is calling out local leaders. This is insanity that our businesses are being robbed daily. Where are you elected officials? What are you doing its time for you to step up and step out? Wow Brian Ingram? He owns purpose, driven restaurants and joins us now, Brian. What have things been like over the last six eight months? For you, its been a difficult road, I mean we all know with Covid its been so difficult on. All of us. The hospitality industry in particular, has been one thats been called to the Matt, so we shut down our of restaurant and started a community kitchen kind of during all of this, and we continue to serve our community every day.

Weve served over one hundred thousand free meals and run a community pantry along with our restaurant. So its been a of tough, a tough were hoping to get back to some sort of normal. Were getting even more frustrated now without law and order, you can have the best food best, restaurant, best, location and youre not going to have business. How has your business been affected? How many times have you been robbed? How many times have your customers been harassed, its the crazy thing? I just opened a brand new office. We were getting ready to reopen with covid. We have three restaurants locally. We opened a new office two days after we opened it all of our office. Computers were stolen. One of my other restaurants last week had somebody come in in the middle of the afternoon at 300 and rob us. We had our safe stolen out just a few nights ago, weve had a customer that just had their car jacked, and this is so crazy for me, as a restaurant owner im telling you about bad things happening

in my restaurant thats, not good for business. That scares people. We have to figure out how our guests, they felt so scared to come into restaurants, because of covid and now were going to put oh, you might get robbed or of you might get car jacked its so so difficult and so so scary and its. It is crazy. Heres. What the St Paul mayor said. The incidents in our community have recently underscored the urgency of our work to evolve public safety systems beyond just emergency response to include data driven crime prevention and intervention strategies were partnering with local residents and law enforcement. To move this forward in due speed. Take your time. Dont complain about the carjacking dont, leave your safe unlocked and just deal with it as we evaluate it. Does that mayors statement make you feel better? No, that one actually upset me even more. What really upsets me is, I can get an alert and had they can

e mail me and text me and say your tables arent six feet apart. Youre not doing this not doing that, but dont tell me. Twenty restaurants and businesses within blocks of you have been robbed in the last couple weeks. Make sure you protect your staff, we do all those things. It would have been helpful. If you told me every business around me had been robbed in the last couple weeks. I said with sarcasm, you dont blame the cops. Theyve been cut back twenty five percent, they have new restrictions, they cant enforce law and order and protect businesses and people, like you, yeah for sure its not about the police. Listen. I was upset and angry when George Floyd and all of those things that have happened and devastated our city, its inexcusable. What happened with that? But what cant happen is that now that theres, this free for all and people are afraid to talk about it. Its really easy to talk about food insecurities and homelessness, and stories that, when youre out there fighting those are feel good stories.

When I start talking about law and order and us being robbed, the hate comes out and it comes out strong for me, this isnt about race, this isnt about any of that this is about protecting our community. If im going to protect our community against food shortages, then I have to also protect about crime. I think so too. I just wonder about who would ever right you a hate message, because youre telling people youve been robbed and car jacked its nuts, you can learn more about Brians. You can learn more about Brians Community Outreach program, give home dot org. Hopefully things will get better and hopefully people will realize you need law and order.