Quite a few staff at a Ceremony Help in Manhattan, together with safety guards, stated their bosses forbid them from participating with the shoplifters.
Dana Kennedy
Comic Michael Rapaport wasn’t joking when he expressed shock as an obvious shoplifter stuffed his baggage and casually pranced out of a Manhattan Ceremony Help with out paying a cent.
“I can’t imagine I’m seeing this s–t,” Rapaport says on his video of the purported criminal, who cheerfully asks the shop’s safety guard, “’Sup?”
Frankly, the comedian shouldn’t have been shocked: Retail theft has soared, with almost 44,000 studies of it final yr — a 36% improve over 2020. The Submit filmed one other thief within the act at a Ceremony Help at eighth Avenue and fiftieth Avenue in Manhattan final week, with the perp so cavalier that he spoke overtly about it to our reporter, admitting he’s been hitting shops for months with out getting arrested.
Final yr, The Submit reported that 22-year-old Isaac Rodriguez had been nabbed for shoplifting 46 instances within the first 10 months of 2021 alone; 77 others with 20 or extra retail-theft expenses are out on the streets.
Truth is, these “petty” thieves hardly ever get arrested, and when they're, they’re usually freed inside hours and prosecutors typically drop the case. Which leaves drugstores, which provide many small requirements, ripe for the selecting.
Now retailers should brace for even extra theft, particularly in Manhattan, the place District Legal professional Alvin Bragg has vowed to maintain such bandits from ever seeing the within of a jail cell.
But retail thievery takes a toll: Our reporters discovered empty cabinets at a dozen CVS, Duane Reade/Walgreens and Ceremony Help shops across the metropolis. Employees the place Rapaport filmed say crooks goal the place each day. That has retailers boarding: Midtown’s Ceremony Help at fiftieth and eighth, the place sources report greater than $200,000 in stolen merchandise over the previous two months alone, is ready to shut by subsequent month.
Progressives like Bragg assume they’re stopping injustice, when in reality they’re inflicting it on harmless retailers and sincere would-be buyers — the general public that they’re sworn to guard.
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