Don’t believe pro-crime progressives when they lie about public safety here in NYC: This year so far has seen 21,578 shoplifting complaints from Gotham’s retailers.
That’s a 5% increase over last year’s obscene 20,552; more than 41% of the 2024 crimes are concentrated in Manhattan.
And that’s part of an ugly, persistent trend.
Full-year numbers since 2021 have jumped from 43,892 to 59,137, an increase of almost 35% — and the real problem is surely far higher, as exhausted merchants don’t bother to report many incidents.
And as noted, this year’s on pace to beat last year’s unacceptably high total.
The shoplifting epidemic is slamming regular New Yorkers the hardest.
The average, trying-to-get-by people who work and shop in places like CVS and Duane Reade.
Now they face danger every day: Who knows if the guy trying to steal a pallet of Pepsi will pull out a knife or a gun if someone happens to look at him crosswise?
And forget about self-defense.
In Manhattan, District Attorney Alvin Bragg has made it abundantly clear that if you lift a hand against a criminal, it’s you who will face the full might of the law.
That’s to say nothing of the massive damage shoplifting does to the social fabric.
The persistent climate of low-level anxiety and fear — toothpaste behind lock and key; shelves ransacked — destroys the trust needed to hold a city like this one together (not to mention how annoying it makes what should be a simple purchase).
And don’t forget the economic harm.
Shoplifting’s so bad, it’s driving even mega-chains like Walgreens to reconsider expansion plans and pushing them to close stores as well (17 in Manhattan alone!).
But crime-loving Dems in New York like Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie have to be bullied and shamed into taking even baby steps to fight the problem (like Gov. Kathy Hochul’s eminently sensible law protecting retail workers, which Heastie first opposed) while leaving the real cause — the state’s disastrous criminal justice “reforms” — largely untouched.
Work for the fringe and screw the little guy — it’s the NY progressive way.
