Portland barbershop struggling after several break-ins this year

PORTLAND Ore. (KPTV) - A barbershop that’s been in business for going on a decade says this last year has been one of their most difficult.

The shop owners at Southeast Barber CO. said they’ve been broken into several times over the last year and are out more than one thousand dollars.

Guil Halstead, co-owner of the shop, said the most recent break-in resulted in his business losing $600 in cash they were planning to deposit the very next day, “and then that night we got broken into. So, that was Murphy’s Law. I’m just tired of having to clean it up.”

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Halstead co-owns the barber shop with his business partner Joshua Pool. They both claim to love their jobs and recall the first seven years of business being great. However, over the last year they say they’ve started spotting more and more drug use around their business, and the two claimed that the increase in drug use goes hand-in-hand with the several break-ins they’ve endured.

“It’s super frustrating,” Pool said.

“I’m like, ‘Dude, please stop breaking into my business,’” Halstead added.

The two said the most recent break-in happened despite them adding additional security, including an alarm system Halstead called “ear-piercingly-loud.”

“It just gets silly after a while,” he said.

Each time someone breaks in, Halstead said they’re left to repair the damage left in the crime’s wake.

“Luckily,” Halstead explained, “I have a trades background, so I can do a lot of that work myself. But each time I have to do an insurance claim my rates go up.”

Halstead said the time it takes to file a claim eats into the time he could be using to make money. That’s on top of the time he spends running to the department store to get a new door and drywall.

“It’s a big hassle on top of the invasion itself,” he said.

Halstead said the first time they were broken into the whole ATM was stolen. The second and third time, he said the ATM was significantly damaged. Each time meant another phone call that needed to be made.

“That’s also getting kind of old,” Halstead said. “Every time I call them it’s to tell him that his stuff got damaged.”

During the last break-in, Halstead said police failed to show up. Instead, Pool was the one who came early in the morning and cleared the building and made sure the thieves were no longer there.

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Pool called it a scary situation, as he was afraid of being rushed by a knife, or gun-wielding intruder.

“You never know,” Pool said. But as far as a business owner, I don’t have any fear in protecting what’s mine.”

Halstead showed FOX12 a letter from the Portland Police Bureau, which regarded a $125 annual fee to register their alarm system. He believes the reason police may not have come was due to them being yet to pay that fee, which he says they weren’t aware of in the first place.

Either way, Halstead wishes police came to help when his business was in need.

“I just ask Portland police to please just show up, because if you don’t show up and someone gets hurt I feel like that’s a really poor excuse not to show up.”

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