{"id":6825,"date":"2026-08-18T07:07:00","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T07:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=6825"},"modified":"2026-08-18T07:07:00","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T07:07:00","slug":"hey-progressives-shoplifting-isnt-need-its-just-plain-greed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/metrotransitreview.com\/?p=6825","title":{"rendered":"Hey progressives: Shoplifting isn’t need, it’s just plain greed"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

Outside Manhattan Criminal Court last week, Brooklyn Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher called the scourge of shoplifting that\u2019s set in over the past decade the result of \u201ccrimes of poverty, people who are stealing things like toothpaste . . . And that means if you\u2019re stealing those things, you need them.\u201d<\/p>\n

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It\u2019s hard to know which would be worse: that Gallagher isn\u2019t aware that shoplifting is a gang-led, bulk-fencing scheme that costs jobs and that can escalate to deadly violence \u2014 or that she doesn\u2019t care.<\/p>\n

The criminals responsible for a disproportionate percentage of New York City retail theft aren\u2019t driven by hunger (or by a desire for clean teeth).<\/p>\n

They are repeat actors \u2014 people who steal and sell stolen goods for a living, or people who steal to support drug habits.<\/p>\n

As The New York Times reported in 2023, just 327 people in 2022 were responsible for almost one in three city shoplifting arrests, with some \u201cengage[d] in shoplifting as a trade,\u201d and others \u201cdriven by addiction or mental illness.\u201d<\/p>\n

Liberals don\u2019t get it<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Criminal rings help small-scale thieves resell their goods \u2014 at pawn shops, at bodegas and online.<\/p>\n

In 2023, The New Yorker profiled a beneficiary of New York\u2019s supportive-housing network, who resold stolen goods online to make a little extra cash.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s common: Open-air markets around the city regularly feature stolen toiletries for sale.<\/p>\n

Even as the most violent crimes in New York City have abated in the past few years after their post-2020 surge, theft remains much higher than a decade ago.<\/p>\n

This year\u2019s tally of reported petit larcenies \u2014 60,003 through early August \u2014 is 5% below last year\u2019s, yes.<\/p>\n

But it remains close to a quarter higher than the norm between the early 2000s and 2017 \u2014 that is, before New York state changed its criminal-justice laws, particularly around evidence production and cash bail, to make it harder to incapacitate repeat thieves.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s partly because people who shoplift\u00a0don\u2019t\u00a0<\/em>go to jail: fewer than nine percent of Rikers Island\u2019s\u00a0current inmates\u00a0are in on\u00a0any\u00a0<\/em>misdemeanor charge.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Gallagher, a democratic socialist who supports such lenience, doesn\u2019t acknowledge what regular New Yorkers know: Mass shoplifting also harms regular people, making it harder to go to the store and pay for stuff.<\/p>\n

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As that well-known right-wing pundit Al Sharpton put it in 2022 when he discussed the \u201cout-of-control\u201d crime rise, \u201cThey\u2019re locking up my toothpaste.\u201d<\/p>\n

The fact that you can\u2019t easily buy mouthwash from the store anymore means fewer people work at the drugstores \u2014 as they\u2019re losing business to Amazon.<\/p>\n

As of June, 37,400 New Yorkers worked at \u201chealth and personal care\u201d retailers \u2014 that is, drugstores \u2014 a full 10,500 people below the 2017 level.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s a loss of 22% of such jobs, when the nation as a whole has shed only 5% of jobs in that category.<\/p>\n

And the supposedly \u201cnon-violent\u201d crime of shoplifting can escalate.<\/p>\n

In 2023 a CVS security guard, Scotty Enoe, tried to stop a thief at a Times Square store, only to be attacked.<\/p>\n

Enoe stabbed the criminal, Charles Brito, in self-defense \u2014 and though DA Alvin Bragg tried to lock him up for manslaughter, a Manhattan jury acquitted him.<\/p>\n

The state legislature in which Gallagher serves could have prevented this death: Brito was a serial shoplifter with more than a dozen prior arrests.<\/p>\n

Just last fall, a Morton Williams guard in Hell\u2019s Kitchen tried to stop a beer thief \u2014 and lost his life grappling with the perp.<\/p>\n

Insult to poor people<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The only reason that shoplifting has fallen slightly in the past couple of years is a modest rollback of the criminal-justice lenience that Gallagher supports. The fact that judges can now set bail for repeat shoplifting means the NYPD re-arrests just 13% of suspects with the first 30 days of their release, down from 20%, The Post reported in April. Worst of all, though, Gallagher\u2019s fact-free insistence that stealing toothpaste is a crime of poverty is an insult to poor people.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

Most poor people don\u2019t steal.<\/p>\n

Thieves do \u2014 and they steal more when they think they can get away with it, thanks to progressivism\u2019s misplaced pieties.<\/p>\n

Nicole Gelinas is a contributing editor to the Manhattan Institute\u2019s City Journal.<\/em><\/p>\n

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The criminals responsible for a disproportionate percentage of New York City retail theft aren\u2019t driven by hunger (or by a desire for clean teeth). 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