It's a crying shame someone had to die last year in order for Walmart to step up and do the right thing.
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Wal-Mart Stores said Wednesday its locations will stay open for more than 24 hours starting Thanksgiving Day and will incorporate crowd-control measures on the holiday weekend to prevent the frenzied rush that led to a trampling death last year at a Black Friday sale in Valley Stream.
The retailer said most of its stores in the United States will remain open from Thanksgiving Day into Friday - the traditional launch of the holiday season known as Black Friday - and will allow customers to begin to line up at different locations within the stores to wait for specific items to go on sale at 5 a.m. Friday.
Wal-Mart also said it has incorporated into its nationwide planning for Black Friday some of the crowd management strategies negotiated with the Nassau County district attorney's office last May after last year's trampling death of Jdimytai Damour.
Nassau County Police Commissioner Lawrence Mulvey said Wednesday he is anticipating calm and order at the retailer's post-Thanksgiving sales event. "We reviewed the plans and are quite satisfied that they
have taken the necessary steps to prepare for holiday shopping," said Mulvey. "I think they are taking some of the best-practice ideas we came up with last year after the tragedy."
Wal-Mart said in a statement it consulted with safety experts in the sports and entertainment industries to develop store-specific plans for all U.S. locations. Each plan looked at how customers approach and enter the store, how they check out and leave, as well as how customers move around the store and near the biggest bargains, Wal-Mart said. "We took elements from New York and applied them to other states," said Dave Tovar, a Wal-Mart spokesman. "We looked at each store on a store-by-store basis and developed specific plans for all of our locations."
Many of the retailer's crowd-control strategies were the result of its settlement with the Nassau DA's office in May, when it negotiated an agreement to avoid criminal charges, according to Meg Reiss of the investigations division. At the center of that deal was the creation of Wal-Mart's crowd management plans for its New York State stores, she added.
Besides explaining the sales process to customers, the steps include a crowd-management staff to maintain orderly entry into the store and placement of promotional or hot items throughout the store to ensure manageable customer traffic.
Mulvey noted that many retailers have ratcheted up their Black Friday safety plans in light of last year's tragedy. For the first time, the National Retail Federation issued crowd management guidelines for special sales events. But many retailers like Best Buy and Target have been using such crowd control strategies for years. Best Buy, for example, hands out tickets for limited sale items, limits the number of customers entering the store and sends staff to talk to people waiting on line, said Peter Conway, general manager of the Westbury Best Buy.
"Reducing anxiety is really a big piece," Conway said, "getting there early in the night and just talking to people and putting them at ease."
http://www.newsday.com/long-island/nassau/li-black-friday-death-spurs-24-hour-wal-marts-1.1580985
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