On Valentine’s Day, Gov. Kathy Hochul went to Queens to tout her efforts to curb what store owners say is soaring retail theft.
Accompanied by District Attorney Melinda Katz, Hochul claimed progress for her pilot initiative where people caught stealing are given trespass notices that allow them to be arrested if they return to the same store. Some 318 businesses in Queens had registered for the program, 329 people had been served with the notices and only 29 violated the order.
“What we are focused on is what has become a sophisticated organized retail operation, the smash-and-grab efforts. They go in and swipe everything off the shelves,” she said.
But store owners in the city and retail theft experts say that is only part of the problem and that the governor’s efforts are unlikely to help them very much.
“We have groups who come in and grab stuff and run,” said Robert Morales, whose 784 Hardware store in East Tremont in the Bronx has been in his family for 40 years. “And we have people who come in and wait for the store to get busy and take power tools.”
The story is similar in Manhattan, where Deborah Koenigsberger’s Noir et Blanc clothing boutique is seeing her profits eroded by persistent theft.
“People used to try to hide the fact they were stealing and you could deter them by watching,” she said. “Now people walk in, take a couple of items and walk out the door.”
The problem is widespread, says Lisa Sorin, president of the Bronx Chamber of Commerce and a spokesperson for the Five Boro Jobs Campaign.
“Small businesses have become fearful of people coming in their doors, especially young adults,” she said.
At her Queens event, the governor said that retail theft had reached $4.4 billion in 2022, which translates into a loss of $176 million in sales taxes.
New York City saw the largest surge in shoplifting between 2019 and mid 2023, according to a study of 24 cities by the Council on Criminal Justice, with an increase of 64%. Los Angeles was close with 61%.
Before COVID, Robert McCrie told his students at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, that shoplifting was on a more or less continuous decline as electronic surveillance systems made the crime too risky.
“Now those systems are being overwhelmed,” he said. “The controls on shoplifting have been reduced because there is not the will to prosecute misdemeanors, which most shoplifting incidents are.”
For a felony charge, the theft must exceed $1,000. Those caught with less are given a desk appearance ticket, which isn’t an effective deterrent, he added.
The response of big chains to the problem has been to lock up the vast majority of their products. At a Duane Reade store on Broadway south of Times Square, only food items at the front of the store and the least expensive item in every category can be bought without an employee unlocking the display.
Small merchants like Morales and Koenigsberger have had to change their operations in ways that are clearly reducing sales or adding costs.
Morales only allows one or two people in the store at a time, forcing other customers to wait in an area by the door until one of his employees can help them.
Instead of only one employee at slow times, Koenigsberger has decided she must have three workers in the store at all times.
“It’s really bad for morale,” she said. “People say, ‘I don’t want to be here, I am scared.’”
Morales said police rarely arrive in time to catch the thieves. Koenigsberger said that even when they do arrive, they tell her, “We are sorry, but even if we catch them we will have to let them go.”
Spokespeople for Mayor Eric Adams did not respond to a request for comment on the issue.
In her State of the State agenda, Hochul proposed creating of a state police team to make cases against organized theft rings, creating penalties for the resale of stolen goods and assaulting retail workers, $10 million for prosecutors to theft teams, $5 million for local police and $5 million in grants for small businesses.
Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie has reacted skeptically to those ideas, and progressives have been unwilling to increase criminal penalties for crimes.
Koenigsberger says what would help her would be funds to hire a security guard, which she estimates could cost $25 an hour with benefits. Her business would not support that added expense.
Morales says a security guard is financially out of the question for his store. “We need that when we call law enforcement they come on time and arrest these people,” he said.
McCrie says stores that can afford it need to tighten security, possibly even admitting customers one at a time after confirming their identity. But the key is enforcement.
“We have the reputation that you can steal $1,000 or less without much consequence,” he said. “That is why New York is the worst and we weren’t like that in the past.”