The aspirin is locked up; the shoplifters go free
Want to buy a six-pack of Brooklyn Lager at the Duane Reade on 103rd and Broadway, or the CVS on Fifth and 14th St.? You’ll have to summon store employees because beer is under lock and key. So are Bayer Aspirin, Tylenol, nutritional supplements, and, at some Duane Reade locations, Colgate toothpaste. (Sometimes the distinctions can be amusing, if baffling; a $5.99 bag of M&Ms in the locked case but not the pricey Godiva chocolates nearby; the name-brand Eczema cream secured but not the house brand two shelves up.)
Rite Aid recently closed its Eighth Ave. and 50th St. location, a frequent target of shoplifters; one video shows a brazen perpetrator waltzing out with the day’s loot.
And outside a Trader Joe’s this month, shocked customers were greeted by two police officers handing out flyers on how to protect belongings and stay safe while shopping.
What has it come to when the cops have to warn shoppers to beware, and when the merchandise is locked up but not the shoplifters?
Welcome to shopping in the heart of Manhattan in 2022. Retail theft is rampant, both of shampoo at drugstores and of clothing, jewelry and handbags at upscale shops. Theft is “100% worse” than two years ago, supermarket owner John Catsimatidis tells me; instead of a package of baloney and a loaf of bread, “people come in and steal $300, $400 worth of product” for resale. His answer is to put fewer packages of meat (a favorite target of thieves) on the shelves and to hire dozens of security guards for his 30 Gristedes and d’Agostino stores.
Rothmans, the iconic men’s store on Park Ave. South and 18th St., was robbed twice in December, as organized crews of criminals stormed inside, assaulted an employee and grabbed thousands of dollars worth of merchandise. Owner Ken Giddon has criticized bail reform and the failure to prosecute perpetrators for enabling criminals to rob his store, get arrested and come back days later to do it again — a situation that “tears at the fabric of the city.” How extensive are such crimes? “Whatever you hear, it’s worse,” he tells me. “People are not reporting crimes.”
Giddon has been tapped by Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg to be the co-chair of a Manhattan small business alliance that includes businesspeople, neighborhood leaders and DA office staff. This is the same DA whose day one memo instructed his prosecutors to downgrade many felony charges and whenever possible to recommend “diversion” for perpetrators instead of jail. Since then, Bragg has been listening attentively — to the police commissioner, the mayor, small business owners, corporate executives and the public — and recently mentioned the possibility of leveling more serious charges for thieves “who are really going from store to store and just taking.” According to NYPD stats, the increases in theft and robbery for the first 10 weeks of 2022 vs. 2021 are staggering: petit larceny up 33%, robbery up 45% and grand larceny up 65%.
The alliance is supposed to make recommendations for reducing shoplifting and robberies by May, but what’s the delay? Surely part of the solution must involve arresting and prosecuting shoplifters (even if no jail time is sought for youthful or firsttime offenders or others truly deserving of leniency) and consistently treating grand larceny and/or assaults of store employees as felonies that can merit incarceration.
Not that it’s any comfort for New Yorkers, but things are bad in other cities, too. The National Retail Federation says 69% of stores had an increase in “organized retail crime” in 2021. San Francisco has been a particular target: Walgreens, parent of Duane Reade, cites crime as a reason for shuttering 22 stores there.
Retailing is a tough business, and never more so than in the age of COVID-19 and with next-day or same-day delivery from Amazon just a click away. Whether the store is a corner bodega, a Times Square souvenir shop or Rothmans, owners face the same bottom-line reality: The harder you make it for customers — locked shelves, higher prices due to theft and the increased costs of security — the less they’ll buy. If they stop coming altogether, another storefront goes dark.
The ramifications of unchecked retail theft go far beyond inconvenience for buyers of aspirin: Small business owners losing the stores they took careers to build, employees losing their jobs, the public losing confidence that city leaders are capable of dealing with disorder and crime. Shoplifting, after all, is not only an economic crime, it’s also the sort of in-your-face offense that makes city dwellers question whether the manifold charms of Manhattan are worth the hassles.
Bragg insists that the scourge of retail crime is a priority, along with gun violence and domestic violence. If so, why do we need the recommendations of an unwieldy 36-member small business alliance when it’s clear what to do today?