By: Dean Weiner
It’s no secret that crime rates have soared in the city, thanks in part to Covid and lenient laws. The New York Post has an exclusive report that Manhattan’s trendiest tourist-packed neighborhoods have become increasingly terrorized by brazen thieves who are leaving shop workers stymied and scared.
Grand larcenies, or thefts of $1,000 or more, have soared up to over 60% in Gotham precincts in the past year, according to the latest NYPD stats — and some business owners blame the state’s lax bail laws for dumping suspects back on the streets to strike again.
“There’s a true belief out there among criminals that they’re going to get away with it,” Jim Giddon, whose Rothmans men’s clothing store in Gramercy was once robbed twice in about a week by the same gang, told said in an exclusive statement to The New York Post.
Mayor Eric Adams held a summit at Gracie Mansion earlier in December to address these issues with citizens and business owners. Adams was reported by The New York Post to have left the meeting after only 20 minutes.
The reporters at The New York Post cite recent crime statistics in their report. Grand larcenies have shot up about 27.6% citywide so far this year over the same period in 2021, with the largest increase — 63.4 percent — in the Midtown South Precinct, which includes Times Square, Grand Central Terminal and Madison Square Garden. That means 2,287 incidents this year versus 1,387 in 2021 for the Manhattan precinct.
Gary Karry, the manager at Gem Pawnbrokers on Eighth Avenue between West 39th and 40th streets, recalled how a crook easily snatched a ring and glasses worth more than $1,000 from his store over the summer.
“He said, ‘Oh, let me see that ring, I used to have something like this,’ ” said store sales manager Ligia Kourany — noting that the “customer’’ told her he had just gotten out of jail and that a relative was going to buy him the ring. “I showed him the ring,” Kourany said.
“Then he said ‘Oh, you have Cartier glasses, let me see them.’ He liked nice things. I gave him the glasses,” the manager said. “He saw an opportunity to run because we buzzed the door open for someone else, and he ran.”
But Karry said he’ll be ready if anyone tries to pull the same stunt again. “I have a big machete if I need it,” he said.
Mayor Adams recently conceded that “grand larcenies are killing our [crime] stats in the city’’ — and it’s not just businesses that are getting targeted.
“Tourists are often getting robbed on our block,” said Shahid Munir, manager of Antiques on 5th in the precinct.
“The cops have come to our store at least five times this year to get our surveillance footage of robberies outside our store.”
The crime increase in NYC, appears to go hand in hand with the start of the extremist BLM movement which went full throttle in 2020.
While the radical insurrectionists are no longer roaming the streets protesting and rioting, their ideology of ‘equity’ left a stain on the city. The intellectual heavyweights, who made off with millions of dollars after white guilt burdened buffoons gave the BLM organization endless amounts of donations, honestly believe robbing from stores is acceptable because of racism and stores having insurance policies.