NYC’s small gains against shoplifting show that Gov. Hochul hasn’t done ENOUGH

Gov. Kathy Hochul took a victory lap Tuesday, congratulating herself for cracking the code on preventing retail theft: It turns out that arresting shoplifters and prosecuting them actually deters pilfering.

Of course, the gov also credited other measures she got passed as part of this year’s budget — but the grim fact is that retail theft is still far higher than before the state’s 2019 criminal-justice “reforms,” which remain largely intact despite Hochul’s tinkering.

Yes, she made things a bit better this year: By all means, assaulting a retail worker should be a felony — yet assaulting anyone should be, no?

Similarly, it was progress to let prosecutors combine the value of stolen goods when they file felony larceny charges, thereby closing the loophole that let thieves skate on misdemeanors if they stole less than $1,000 worth of merch. But DAs’ hands shouldn’t have been tied in the first place.

Above all: Hochul made merry at a Harlem press conference Tuesday because shoplifting in New York City is down 12% since last year — when it shot up 64% from 2019 to 2023.

So we’re still a long way from what used to be normal, and some of the changes for the worse help explain the drop in retail theft.

Drug stores haven’t been taking down the locked plastic doors that make buying shampoo feel like visiting a prisoner in supermax detention, and shops of all kinds have added security and otherwise limited customer access.  

Plus, a lot of the stores hit hardest by the shoplifting plague have up and closed. You can’t steal from a store that isn’t there anymore. 

And the progressives’ experiment in law non-enforcement is far from over: The criminal-justice deformers prevent more than modest tweaks to their handiwork, and keep pushing new “reforms” on other fronts.

Zohran Mamdani’s Democratic Socialists want to “end all misdemeanor offenses,” which are part of the “criminalization of working-class survival.” 

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez spoke for the whole movement when she explained that “scared” people “either need to shoplift some bread or go hungry.”

In fact, though it may surprise the “laws create crime” brigade, retail thieves aren’t shoplifting baby formula and deodorant because they desperately need those items to “survive”: They rob to re-sell, often to then buy drugs.  

Hochul keeps taking baby steps in the right direction, but that’s not remotely enough.

New York needs to end, not limit, the left’s delusional justice experiments.