Enrique Gutierrez, the owner of Teocali Mexican Restaurant & Cantina on Holmes Road, remembers seeing his business the morning after it had been broken into.
"It was just the worst feeling ever," Gutierrez said.
Gutierrez' was just one of dozens of local businesses hit by property crimes and break-ins over the last month. And he and other owners say the initial response from authorities was disappointing.
Evan Ashby, owner of Mildred's, says both his downtown and Crossroads stores were broken into in September. But he said 911 didn't answer his security service's calls.
"(We) weren't even able to make a police report until the following morning," Ashby told KCUR's Up To Date.
Andrew Cameron of Donutology expressed similar frustration.
"It took us two days to even get a case number and file a report," Cameron said.
All three agreed that Kansas City's new Back to Business fund, which would compensate small business owners for losses due to property crime, was a positive step.
Cameron says that the fund's payments of a few thousand dollars may not seem like a lot of money, but "when we make our money one donut at a time, that's a lot of donuts."
- Andrew Cameron, Donutology owner
- Enrique Gutierrez, Teocali owner
- Evan Ashby, Mildred's owner
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