Just 327 unrepentant crooks accounted for 30% of the Big Apple’s 22,000 shoplifting arrests last year, the NYPD said Thursday.
The staggering statistics mean the alleged recidivists got busted a total of about 6,600 times — for an average of more than 20 times each.
But even more alarming is where most of them are now — which is right back on the streets, NYPD Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael Lipetri said during a briefing on 2022’s CompStat numbers.
Lipetri said the city’s ongoing shoplifting crisis sparked about 63,000 complaints from merchants.
“We arrested 327 people, 327 people that account for 30% of all the arrests,” he said. “All the arrests — 327 people are 30% of our 22,000.”
Lipetri also said that “about half” of the group were “convicted felons.”
“And guess what? Two hundred thirty-five of them — so 235 out of 327 — are walking around the streets of New York right now,” he said. “Just doing what? Unfortunately, making stores close or making families wait 15 minutes 20 minutes to get something unlocked — because there’s not a lot of consequences.”
New York’s controversial, 2019 bail reform law generally prohibits judges from setting bail in cases involving non-violent felonies and misdemeanors such as shoplifting.
Mayor Eric Adams, who’s been calling on state lawmakers to roll back bail reform, said Thursday that he planned to “return to Albany this year to talk about things like, how do we look at recidivism?”
The Post has exclusively exposed several serial shoplifters, including self-proclaimed “professional booster” Michelle McKelley, “Teflon con” Charles Wold and “Man of Steal” Isaac Rodriguez — whose story led then-NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea to tweet: “Insanity. No other way to describe the resulting crime that has flowed from disastrous bail reform law.”
Also during Thursday’s briefing at NYPD headquarters in Lower Manhattan, Chief of Patrol John Chell said the department’s low-profile Neighborhood Safety Teams seized 431 guns during 411 incidents that led to 501 arrests.
“One out of every four encounters resulted in a firearm being removed from the street,” Chell said.
Adams called the work of the NSTs — which he established after the NYPD’s controversial, undercover Anti-Crime Units were disbanded under former Mayor Bill de Blasio — “a huge win for us.”
“And those 500 guns mean 500 people are less likely to be shot,” he said.
The NYPD’s year-end CompStat report showed major declines in murders and shootings, which fell 11.3% and 17.2%, respectively, compared to 2021.
But the overall rate of major crimes increased by 22.4%, with double-digit spikes in five of the seven categories.
Auto thefts skyrocketed 32.2%, followed by robberies and grand larcenies, which surged 25.5% and 25.2%.
Burglaries rose 22.1%, while felony assaults increased by 12.9% and rapes were up 7.7%, according to the NYPD.
