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| James Estrin/The New York Times |
Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in the city last year involved just 327 people, the police said. Businesses say they have little defense.
New York City’s storefront businesses, already weathering inflation and an uneven recovery from the coronavirus pandemic, are also contending with what the police say is a dramatic increase in shoplifting. But statistics also reveal a startling reality: A relative handful of shoplifters are responsible for an outsize percentage of retail crime.
Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in New York City last year involved just 327 people, the police said. Collectively, they were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said. Some engage in shoplifting as a trade, while others are driven by addiction or mental illness; the police did not identify the 327 people in the analysis.
The victims are also concentrated: 18 department stores and seven chain pharmacy locations accounted for 20 percent of all complaints, the police said.
Petty thefts are one of the main drivers of the city’s overall crime rate, even as murders, shootings and other violent crimes have continued to drop. At a recent news conference, Commissioner Sewell said the situation demanded a “perpetual carousel of police resources.”
Criminal justice reform advocates have said that petty thefts are a crime of necessity, and that many down-on-their-luck New Yorkers are stealing what they need to survive in one of the world’s most expensive cities. But law enforcement and trade groups have blamed a proliferation of organized shoplifting crews, repeat offenders and the new state bail law that they argue has enabled such offenders to avoid jail time.
Last year, 41 people were indicted in New York City in connection with a theft ring that state prosecutors said shoplifted millions of dollars worth of beauty products and luxury goods that were sold online.
By the end of 2022, the theft of items valued at less than $1,000 had increased 53 percent since 2019 at major commercial locations, according to a new analysis of police data by researchers at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice.
Over the past five years, shoplifting complaints nearly doubled, peaking at nearly 64,000 last year, police data shows. Only about 34 percent resulted in arrests last year, compared with 60 percent in 2017.
Businesses large and small are grappling with “smash and grab” thefts, said David Johnston, vice president of asset protection and retail operations at the National Retail Federation.
“It’s the loss coupled with the violence and the concern of safety,” he said.
Representatives for major retailers in the city, including CVS, Macy’s and Target did not respond to requests for comment on shoplifting in New York. A spokeswoman for Walgreens, Kris Lathan, said the company had created a “major crimes unit” to assist authorities with investigations.
An estimate from a coalition of independent supermarkets, bodegas and grocers in the city, Collective Action to Protect Our Stores, put the total revenue lost to retail theft at about $300 million. --->READ MORE HERE
Highlights. Stores lost an estimated $86.6 billion to retail theft in 2022; projections indicate that in 2025, retail theft may cost stores over $115 billion.
- Retailers lost as much as $94.5 billion in gross revenue to theft in 2021, up 4.07% year-over-year (YoY).
- 58% of organized retail crime is cargo theft.
- The average shoplifting incident costs retailers $461.86 in 2020.
- Stores catch shoplifters roughly 2.0% of the time; the average shoplifter is arrested once out of every 100 incidents.
- Retailers lost $84.9 billion in fraudulent sales returns in 2021.
--->LOTS MORE HERE
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