BLUE CITY BLUES: Could City-Owned Grocery Stores Survive New York’s Shoplifting Plague?

An annual survey of chain stores in New York has documented the closing of hundreds of locations since 2020. Every one of the 13 largest chains in the city has fewer outlets today than it did in 2019. Collectively, these operators have shuttered a shocking 797 stores in New York. Essential retailers like drug stores and supermarkets have been disappearing. Rite Aid, whose top retailing executive told analysts in 2022 that it was almost impossible to stop retail theft in New York City, has closed 73 stores. Walgreens and Duane Reade have shuttered another 128 locations. Executives blamed not only losses from theft but also sharply declining sales, thanks to security efforts like removing all merchandise from shelves and locking it in cases. Key Food, a small supermarket chain, has closed 18 stores. The city also has 45 fewer 7-Eleven outlets. Discount chains Family Dollar and Dollar General have shut 20 stores.

In New York City and nationwide, retailers have struggled to respond to waves of shoplifting prompted by revisions to laws that raised the value of goods a shoplifter must steal before getting charged with a felony, and by bail reforms that result in the quick release of those committing nonviolent crimes. In 2021, to take one example, the NYPD arrested one individual 57 times, including 46 times for shoplifting; he never went to jail. In several instances, cops arrested the man twice in the same day. “This guy comes here every day stealing, every single day,” one Walgreens store manager told the New York Post.

A Manhattan Institute study found that, in the wake of the state’s 2020 bail reforms, shoplifting complaints in the city increased from fewer than 40,000 in 2019 to nearly 65,000 in 2022. Meantime, a study by criminologists determined that two-thirds of those released under the 2020 bail reforms get rearrested within two years. Police commissioner Jessica Tisch has argued that these so-called reforms “have rendered the criminal justice system in New York City a high-speed revolving door for recidivists.”

There’s little evidence that Mamdani’s agenda as mayor would address these problems.

Yes, but Mamdani could throw more Other People’s Money at his city-owned stores, effectively subsidizing criminality. Which is probably the point.