Shampoo, toothpaste, and razors are items that grocery stores have increasingly begun to lock behind counters. Soon, that list could include food.
“People are not afraid to come into their store and steal,” said Nelson Eusebio of the National Supermarket Association.
“Our employees are terrified,” Eusebio continued. “We have young people who come to work, young tellers who work part-time, these children are 16-17 years old. They are traumatized.”
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The National Supermarket Association represents independent grocery stores in New York City. Their statistics show that 30% of their members have left town in the last few years.
Thieves in New York were caught on video stealing laundry detergent from a store near Manhattan.
(FoxNews)
New York City has been home to a wave of “serial shoplifters,” men and women who make a habit of breaking into stores, stealing whatever they can, and leaving. This has resulted in more than 4,000 grocery stores asking prosecutors to set repeat shoplifters bail and making assaults on retail workers a Class D felony.
“Everything that is cosmetics, shampoo, baby formula is behind the counters. It’s going to happen more and more,” says Eusebio. “We’re going to have an environment where everything is behind the counter and the shopping experience just disappears.”
The industry is coming together to form a coalition called Collective Action to Protect Our Stores (CAPS).
Aftermath of a looting in New York City
(Andre Brown/LOCAL NEWS X/TMX)
The coalition is led by the independent supermarkets of the National Supermarket Association and the founding members are the National Supermarket Association, the Bodegas and Small Business Group and the Metro Supermarket Association.
“Retail theft is a major problem in New York, and owners and operators of supermarkets, bodegas and other stores are thinking about customer safety and their own well-being and then considering ideas like this,” CAPS told Fox News. Digital. “We formed Class Action to Protect Our Stores because this is a crisis, and we need the state, the city, the district attorneys and other New York leaders to start acting like one.”
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The group also calls on prosecutors to invoke the “damage for harm” doctrine to target serial thieves and for the district attorney’s and NYPD offices to dedicate units to tackle the plague.
CAPS also argues that buying stolen groceries should be a Class A misdemeanor that can lead to fines and a short jail sentence.
Mayor Eric Adams appears in Times Square in October. On Friday, officials in his administration said the mayor took two days off starting Thursday, but they did not say where he was.
((Luiz C. Ribeiro/New York Daily News/Tribune News Service via Getty Images))
New York City Mayor Eric Adams has worked hard to combat recidivism. “Criminals think our criminal justice system is a joke,” Adams said in comments referring to a serial intruder who was arrested and released 26 times. “Those arrested for grand theft go to court, are released, and on their way home from court, they are committing another grand theft.”
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According to the New York Police Department, grand theft, thefts of more than $1,000, increased 80% in New York City last year.
