The Big Apple’s shoplifting epidemic is costing retail workers their jobs, Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday — as he endorsed Gov. Kathy Hochul’s push to give judges slightly more discretion in setting bail for criminal defendants.
During testimony at an annual Albany budget hearing known as “Tin Cup Day,” when mayors make their pitches for resources in the state budget, Adams was asked by Assemblyman Mike Reilly (R-Staten Island) about solutions to the problems of “organized retail crime” and the justice system’s “revolving door.”
“So, what we can’t do is allow repeat offenders to make a mockery of our criminal justice system — and repeatedly!” he said.
“We’re losing chain stores that are closing down. People who are being employed in those stores are losing their jobs. They’re adding to our unemployment.”
Adams — whose appearance at the joint legislative public hearing was cut short by a surprise Senate vote that rejected Hochul’s choice of Justice Hector LaSalle to head the Court of Appeals — also pre-empted critics of his desire to crack down on unrepentant shoplifters.
“So, people who say that we’re criminalizing the poor — they’re wrong,” he said. “Poor and low-income New Yorkers are being unemployed because we’re losing those businesses in our city.”
Adams said there were three categories of shoplifters: those who are “part of an organized ring,” people with substance abuse problems, and “those who need basic services.”
Adams said the first group should be dealt with by the criminal justice system. But others should be given deferred prosecutions and have their underlying issues addressed by social services providers.
Adams also appeared to have dropped his repeated demand that New York’s judges be given the power to consider the danger that defendants pose to the public when setting bail, as is the law in every other state and the federal court system.
Instead, the mayor threw his weight behind Hochul’s plan to remove a provision of the state’s controversial 2019 bail reform law that requires judges to impose the “least restrictive” means of ensuring that defendants return to court.
“The governor’s budget rightfully proposes to keep us safer by giving us additional tools to address our recidivist crises,” Adams said. “Changes to the ‘least restrictive’ standard, as the governor has proposed, will go a long way towards solving our recidivist problem.
“This is critical because a disproportionate share of the serious crime in New York City is being driven by a limited number of extreme recidivists — approximately 2,000 people — who commit crime after crime while out on the street on bail,” he added.
In August, the NYPD released details on 10 career criminals who racked up a combined total of nearly 500 arrests since bail reform went into effect in 2020.
The department’s “worst of the worst” included two defendants who allegedly began their lives of crime in the wake of bail reform, with one busted 33 times since 2020 and the other arrested 22 times just during the first seven months of 2022.
But the NYPD’s list didn’t include several repeat offenders previously exposed by The Post, including “Man of Steal” Issac Rodriguez and “Teflon Con” Charles Wold.
Adams has blamed the justice system’s practice of “catch, release, repeat” for fueling crime in the city and turning it into “a laughingstock of our entire country.”
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