In New York, everything’s a five-finger discount these days.
The Big Apple has become a shoplifter’s paradise — with reported retail thefts hitting record levels for the second year in a row in 2022, a Post analysis of police data shows.
The number of shoplifting complaints surged to more than 63,000 last year — a 45% jump over the roughly 45,000 reported in 2021 and a nearly 275% jump compared to the mid-2000s, the statistics show.
“People keep taking things and we can’t stop them,” one frustrated employee told The Post on Thursday inside a Lower Manhattan Target that was hit hundreds of times.
“It’s a problem with all retail in the area. At some point, there won’t even be a store.”
The staggering data highlights business owners’ recent woes as they continue to wait for Mayor Eric Adams to make good on his promise two months ago to help during a citywide summit.
Reports of sticky-fingered shoppers have been creeping up each year since 2006 — which is the earliest data available — but have exploded in recent years.
The theft figures reached a high of 37,838 in 2019, just before the pandemic, when they briefly dropped.
But as the city tried to get back to normal, the number of thefts also returned to its old trend, as 2021 saw yet another record with 43,675 reports of shoplifting, larcenies and robberies, the NYPD data shows.
And last year the number spiked again, going up 20,024 for a total of 63,699 complaints, according to the statistics.
In the NYPD’s 1st Precinct — the hardest-hit area in the city — shoplifting incidents nearly doubled in 2022 from 2,103 to 4,061, the data shows.
Nearby, in the East Village, 9th Precinct retail thefts soared by more than 150% from 579 to 1,467.
“Disheartening numbers, to say the least,” said former NYPD supervisor Chris Hermann, who is now an assistant professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice in Manhattan.
“There’s no quick fix to something like this,” Hermann noted. “Many stores just rely on the police for their issues and that’s not realistic nowadays.”
Meanwhile, fed-up store owners feel helpless — with a group of business leaders due to meet with Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Friday in a desperate bid for help.
“The anxiety is of being aware that we’re all vulnerable,” said Marco Pasanella, the owner of Pasanella & Sons Vintners on South Street in Manhattan.
“I’m not scared of being attacked or anything,” Pasanella said. “But I’ve realized that stores are kind of sitting ducks if people want to be bad.”
Among the hardest-hit retailers is the Target department store on Greenwich Street in Manhattan, which was hit by shoplifters 646 times last year, the statistics show.
Three Duane Reade outlets on Broadway and Water Street in Manhattan reported more than 1,000 shoplifting incidents combined in 2022, according to the data.
And there’s very little that the stores can do about it.
“We normally have to let people take whatever they are stealing,” a Brooklyn supermarket employee said. “If I see someone taking something, I report it to one of the security officers upstairs and then they call the police.
“By the time police get here, the thief is gone,” the worker said. “If I touched someone or tried to prevent them from stealing, I’d get fired. So there’s not much we can do. The police aren’t here when we need them to be.”
Help was supposed to be on the way in December when Adams hosted a two-hour summit at Gracie Mansion to figure out how to curb retail thefts in the city.
All five Big Apple district attorneys, state Attorney General Letitia James and top NYPD officials were in attendance, along with business groups and major retailers.
“Our retail stores have my commitment that we will continue to work towards real, long-lasting solutions on the issue of retail theft,” the mayor promised at the time.
But he left the summit after 20 minutes, leaving participants to work it out themselves.
“This data confirms what store workers and owners have been feeling every day: Retail theft is at a crisis level in New York City,” a spokesperson for the Collective Action to Protect Our Stores.
“Every day, our workers are being assaulted and stores robbed all while customers are placed in danger; we need the state and city to step up.”
A spokesman for City Hall said the mayor looks “forward to releasing our recommendations soon, and thanks these business owners for their advocacy.”
They did not say when that report would be made public.
An NYPD spokesperson said cops have “significantly increased arrests” by 68% last year to combat the surge.
“This trend continues in 2023. Year-to-date as of Feb. 5, shoplifting-related arrests are up by 56%,” the spokesperson said.
Meanwhile, one veteran cop said New York’s Finest find themselves short-handed.
“The job can’t address this condition until they address the manpower shortage [at the NYPD] to respond to these jobs, or be present to prevent them,” he said.
“You can’t just paint over mold for a long-term solution.”
https://nypost.com/2023/02/10/we-cant-stop-them-shoplifting-hit-record-highs-in-nyc-last-year/
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