Furious Big Apple business owners are tearing state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie to shreds over his refusal to toughen penalties against violent shoplifters, with some fuming: “C “It’s open season on retail workers.”
Heastie (D-Bronx) sparked widespread outrage last week when he shut down Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to toughen sentences for criminals, bizarrely declaring, “I just don’t believe that increasing penalties or a deterrent against crime.
“How can crime be deterred, except through punishment? » an enraged Nelson Eusebio, who heads the National Supermarket Association and the Coalition to Save Our Supermarkets, told the Post on Monday.
“Our workers are on the front lines facing shoplifters and criminals,” Eusebio said. “It’s open season for retail workers in the city.”
An employee at an Upper East Side CVS — where a hammer-wielding shoplifter smashed a 37-year-old worker’s hand and several store windows in November during a seizure when his crime was foiled – told the Post on Monday: “What can you do?
“Nobody wants to deal with it,” the employee said of the criminal violence, which has led the store “to lock up even low-priced products because of the quantity” of what is stolen during rampages.
“They don’t take one or two (items), they take the whole shelf,” the worker said.
The Lexington Avenue store is now closing in May, although a representative for the chain did not mention violent theft or other shoplifting as the reason, according to local outlet Patch.
But the employee told the Post that the workers made their dark joke: “Now the items are under lock and key, and the people aren’t.” »
Eusebio, which represents 600 supermarkets in Gotham and beyond, estimates that assaults against its members alone are up 20 percent this year, based on complaints it has received.
Retail thefts across the city have increased overall by more than 6.5% – or to 14,910 – so far this year, compared to the same period in 2023, when 13,987 incidents were recorded, according to the latest crime statistics from the NYPD.
Hochul, in her budget, called for a crackdown on the explosion in retail theft, which she said costs Empire State retailers $4.4 billion a year. She also said she wants to increase penalties for criminals who prey on store employees.
But Heastie, whose position as Speaker of the Assembly is particularly powerful, refused to support the plan.
“I don’t want to give the impression that we don’t care about stopping what happened to retail workers. This is important to us. “We just have other ideas on how to do it,” he said last Tuesday after saying that lawmakers in Albany should not intervene on criminal penalties as they negotiated the massive budget. the Empire State.
“If you continue to rely on sanctions, what happens once people are arrested? You always only worry about what happens after something has already happened,” Heastie said.
Even the former governor. David Paterson said he was shocked by the speaker’s position.
“It’s like a revolving door: There’s no possibility of rehabilitation, no possibility of contrition to the parole board” without harsher sanctions, Paterson said Sunday on “The Cats Roundtable.” ” from 770 WABC.
“(Heastie) is a very good friend of mine, a very honest person. I would like to have this conversation with him one-on-one,” added the ex-governor.
Heastie said he was still open to parts of Hochul’s plan, including taking down organized theft rings.
Retailers and authorities told the Post that these networks create a major underground economy, as they work through online resale sites such as eBay and Facebook Marketplace to sell their illicit products.
“It’s better to commit a crime than get a job in New York,” Francisco Marte, president of the Bodega and Small Business Association of New York, told the Post on Monday.
Marte, whose family alone owns 20 bodegas across the city, said he was “disappointed but not surprised” by Heastie’s remarks.
Some Poles “like to endanger the lives of the business world and the working class,” Marte said.
Salvatore Lopiccolo knows this only too well.
Lopiccolo was working as a security guard at a Walgreens at the Port Authority Bus Terminal in May 2023 when a suspected shoplifter was filmed punching him — then ending up in the wind after jumping a hearing date.
“Didn’t I predict this exact scenario?” » Lopiccolo joked at the time.
New Yorkers would also be hard-pressed to forget former Harlem bodega worker Jose Alba, who fatally stabbed a violent customer in self-defense and ended up being charged in the crazed man’s death.
The charges against Alba were ultimately dropped after widespread outcry.
Heastie did not immediately respond to a request for comment from The Post on Monday.
New York Post
