NYC grocers demand clampdown on shoplifters as violent heists escalate

NY Post ^ | January 8, 2023 | Lisa Fickenscher

[Twotone]

Thousands of independent grocers across New York City are forming a fast-growing political coalition to demand that elected officials and law enforcement clamp down on shoplifters, claiming that increasingly brazen and violent heists have created a crisis, The Post has learned.

The group — which already represents nearly 4,000 stores, including corner bodegas and supermarkets like KeyFood and C-Town in the New York metro area — is calling for prosecutors and judges to set bail for “repeat theft offenders,” reversing key provisions of New York’s sweeping and controversial bail reform law in 2019. 

Collective Action to Protect our Stores, or CAPS, is also asking lawmakers to make assaults on retail workers a Class D felony — a protection given to MTA and NYPD officers and livery drivers in New York that grocers argue they should receive as essential workers, too.

“We have been assaulted, terrorized, and our physical and mental health jeopardized,” the group said in a letter being sent to Gov. Kathy Hochul and Mayor Eric Adams on Monday in addition to other city and state officials. “A rise in larceny cases has hit independent supermarkets hard.”

[Opinionated Blowhard]

Do what they did in Philadelphia - just shut down the shops. Problem solved!!

[PapaBear3625]

Perhaps they need to return to the old fashioned grocery stores where you went in, gave your list to the counter man who dispatched a kid to go in back and get the goods on your list. Then the basket of goods would be given to you when you pay.

Lots of supermarkets started doing that during the COVID lockdown, as a service to customers. You put in your order through the website, pay for it then, store clerk gets the order, and brings it to your car so you don't have to mingle with people.

[T.B. Yoits]

How many of these grocers voted for Democrats, I wonder?

Bingo. The problem is not the rabid savage violently attacking store owners or other shoppers. The problem is the Democrat politician who aids and abets them.

[Vigilanteman]

You mean kind of like on-line grocery ordering and pick-up.

I've heard complaints that people who do in-store shopping subsidize those of us who seldom set foot in a supermarket.

To which I reply "What are the shoplifting losses from people like me?"

[VideoPaul]

LOVE IT! “Undocumented income redistribution”.

As in, “He’s not shoplifting, it was an undocumented redistribution of income”.

A perfect way for liberals to excuse criminal thievery just like they do the southern border.

We’ll put Kamalalalalabaabaa in charge of that too. She can be the shoplifting czar.