QNS. 'HOT' CORNER
Migrants' stolen items and hookers
A stretch of Jackson Heights has devolved into an illegal migrant shopping district, an unchecked open-air market where everything from women to stolen goods can be had, The Post has learned.
Roosevelt Avenue near 91st Street in Queens is littered daily with migrant vendors hawking goods they ripped off from shopkeepers just steps away, while prostitutes proposition passersby at all hours, and frustrated merchants and residents say they’re helpless to do anything about it.
‘Relentless’
“It’s relentless,” said Milton Reyes, who manages Mi Farmacia pharmacy on the avenue. “You should see it on Saturdays. It’s so heavy you can’t even step onto the sidewalk . . . my customers don’t even want to get dropped off.
“I’m not faulting the police,” he said. “They will come by and they will pick up a few of them. But as soon as the police car pulls away they start moving back. Twenty minutes later they’re all set up again like nothing happened.”
Sex workers openly cruise the street, as older madams sit nearby and point out potential johns.
Migrant peddlers lay out the stolen merchandise for re-sale, with items such as mouthwash, diapers and baby formula spread out on blankets on the sidewalk.
The goods are stored in suitcases packed into vans parked across the street and hauled out in the morning, with one vendor this week wheeling up the items in a stolen Target shopping cart.
Vendors mistook a Post reporter and photographer for police officers and scattered, but were back as soon as they passed.
One law-enforcement source blamed soft-on-crime laws that severely limit what cops can do and cut low-level, nonviolent offenders loose once they get to court.
“Roosevelt Avenue is the microcosm — a perfect storm composed of lunatic legislation that prevents enforcement of laws and the subsequent punitive results,” the source said. “Add to that waves of people with nothing to lose and you have criminality and degradation in quality of life for the community — and the city as a whole.”
Open-air prostitution at a thriving “Market of Sweethearts” has plagued Roosevelt Avenue for months. In January, cops shuttered a dozen walk-up bordellos, but it didn’t stop the sex trade for long.
Shoplifting migrants ransack local retailers then brazenly sell their stolen merchandise for 20% or 30% less just steps from the stores, retailers said.
“They are stealing,” Francisco O’Porta, a security guard at LotLess, told The Post. “They rip it out of the box, but it’s ours. You can see. It is brand new, but they are selling it as used. It’s our stuff.
“They have been training people,” said O’Porta, 55. “They have lookouts, you know, people to yell so they can pick up and leave when police come. I am catching a lot, a lot of them stealing. I caught 20 people last week. Twenty in one week. They are hurting business.”
One local who identified himself as Zhou H. said, “I don’t know what’s ever going to get rid of this. It’s like a sub-economy. Everybody buys from these guys.
“About a year ago, it built up,” he said. “But I thought, these people aren’t getting the kind of opportunities, they need to feed themselves, you know, they’re trying to survive so, whatever. About a year ago, there’s five of them, starting at 10 in the morning. Then 10 of them and then there’s 20 of them all day. At night? Forget about it!
“It’s just become normal.”