Shoplifting, including a large percentage by organized dangerous criminal groups, cost New York retailers $4.4 billion in 2022, and will likely hit hardest this year.
Yet the Legislature (as with all the other costs imposed by our disastrous criminal justice “reforms”) has done almost nothing.
Literally billions of dollars stolen from retailers large and small throughout the Empire State, but the best our overlords in Albany could do was a bill to create a workgroup to study ways to combat the scourge of organized networks of thieves in retail trade.
As if there is some mystery here.
And Gov. Kathy Hochul vetoed the bill because it has a series of similar measures to “establish a task force.”
The question now is: Will he pressure lawmakers to do something? substantial?
This bill was a mere gesture to show New York voters, about 63% of whom see crime as a “very serious” problem, that their legislators “care,” but the real signal is different. and brutally clear: don’t you dare do it. even think on organized shoplifting as a crisis.
Let alone expect the law to be applied to stop it.
Or prosecutors who work to keep criminals off the streets.
Or judges who do not conspire to let the thugs go free.
It’s no wonder the Big Apple is leading the country in skyrocketing retail crime: The city saw a 64% increase in the number of reported incidents of retail theft between early 2019 and June 2023, surpassing Los Angeles and Dallas for that dubious honor.
The lack of real action by New York’s leaders tells citizens that the state and its officials are unwilling (and increasingly unable) to protect them from lawbreakers.
It tells businesses that huge sums of money can be stolen from them (on top of New York’s already suffocating tax and regulatory environment) and no official will lift a finger to stop it, driving moms and dads to the ground and the big guys to the ruin. He thinks about leaving the city.
And it leaves all New Yorkers in mortal danger, especially retail employees.
So: Will our governor fight to pass legislation that died this year to make assaults on retail workers felonies?
Or the also marginalized bill to make petty thefts felonies if committed within two years of a prior conviction?
Until Hochul starts putting his energy and political capital behind moves like that, public safety (and the Empire State’s lagging economy) are completely doomed.
