Outside Manhattan Criminal Court last week, Brooklyn Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher called the scourge of shoplifting that’s set in over the past decade the result of “crimes of poverty, people who are stealing things like toothpaste . . . And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them.”
It’s hard to know which would be worse: that Gallagher isn’t aware that shoplifting is a gang-led, bulk-fencing scheme that costs jobs and that can escalate to deadly violence — or that she doesn’t care.
The criminals responsible for a disproportionate percentage of New York City retail theft aren’t driven by hunger (or by a desire for clean teeth).
They are repeat actors — people who steal and sell stolen goods for a living, or people who steal to support drug habits.
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 “engage[d] in shoplifting as a trade,” and others “driven by addiction or mental illness.”
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