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Are you upset, like “1619 Project” chief Nikole-Hannah-Jones, on the “demeaning” approach drugstores “lock up every little thing”? Distressed that Midtown retailers are deploying K-9 units to discourage thieves?
Horrified by the homicide that followed alleged shrimp-stealing on the Fulton Fish Market? Saddened by the case of bodega clerk Jose Alba, who killed in self-defense in one other escalated-from-shoplifting incident?
Welcome to the progressive dystopia, created by lefties who think about that each one shoplifting is a “crime of poverty” and so ought to successfully go unpunished. Thanks to New York’s criminal-justice “reforms,” district attorneys discover it near-impossible to jail these perps, so the identical relative handful (however rising!) of suspects carry on re-offending.
As a outcome, shoplifting complaints across the city surged to greater than 63,000 in 2022, up 45% over the 2021 degree and virtually 275% from the primary decade of the century. And ever-more retailers don’t even file complaints, because it appears fairly pointless.
Meanwhile, extra brazen thieves go for multimillion-dollar smash-and-grabs and different luxury-store raids.
It’s not simply the no-bail legal guidelines, by the best way: Other “reforms” oblige prosecutors to do countless paperwork for each case they imply to carry to court docket — main them to surrender on some felonies, in addition to most misdemeanor crimes.
Of course, it’s not to place meals on the desk, or every other “crime of poverty”: Mostly, we’d wager, the thieves’ income go to purchase medication.
“People who say that we’re criminalizing the poor — they’re flawed,” famous Mayor Eric Adams noted last week. Instead, “poor and low-income New Yorkers are being unemployed as a result of we’re dropping these companies in our metropolis.”
Retailers who don’t shut down are doing every little thing from hiring private security patrols to deploying facial-recognition tech, together with all of the locked-up toothpaste, deodorant and so forth.
Meanwhile, progressives within the Legislature are decided to nix Gov. Kathy Hochul’s modest fix to the no-bail regulation, scrapping the complicated requirement for judges to use the “least restrictive” means to make sure a defendant returns to court docket. Instead, they’re seeking to “reform” some extra by eliminating a couple of final mandatory-minimum penalties for individuals who nonetheless get convicted.
As far because the left’s involved, New York’s solely crime downside is a few individuals are winding up behind bars. And they marvel why so many small companies are shutting down within the neighborhoods they symbolize.
