Every day, retail workers across New York’s five boroughs wake up in the morning and head to the shops, markets and other places of work. They go to help their families and to help New Yorkers with the goods and services they need to get by. Getting up, work, and coming home should be fairly routine. Yet for too many retail workers, simply being at work has become dangerous.
We saw that again this week when a group of women senselessly assaulted 25-year-old cashier Lisbel Rodriguez Luna in the Bronx.
Retail workers have been attacked repeatedly, and stores have been violently robbed. That’s why it’s time to change our laws to protect these workers and the customers they serve.
New York’s independent supermarkets, bodegas and mom-and-pop retail shops are the backbones of our communities. From hiring our residents to providing access to healthy, fresh foods and daily necessities for families, these businesses and their workers run neighbourhoods 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
Retail employees were essential workers and took their responsibility seriously, from risking their lives at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to stepping up in the 1970s and ’80’s, ensuring underserved communities were not without access to food and other essentials. But their jobs are getting more difficult and more dangerous.
The Post reported that “Burglars and thieves had a field day” last year, propelling the city’s 22% surge in major crime. This rise in crime has hit independent supermarkets hard. Indeed, some have hired private security. Single robberies have been as high as $72,000. New Yorkers expect and deserve to feel safe when they shop — but right now, for too many, they do not.
The crime rise has many victims: the stores that lose money, the harmed workers and consumers who don’t feel safe to shop.
These are not the only shocking statistics. Just 327 offenders accounted for 30% of New York City’s 22,000 retail theft arrests in 2022. Recidivists were arrested nearly 6,600 times, averaging about 20 times each. Merchants have made approximately 63,000 complaints — most going unresolved. As a result, shoplifting is vastly underreported, and shopkeepers are putting themselves in harm’s way to resolve altercations. The situation is entirely untenable — something must be done to rectify it before more stores close and more workers are harmed.
That’s where the city and state can step in to help. While district attorneys and other law enforcement, as well as mayors throughout the state, are doing their best to tackle the issue of repeat retail theft, which often involves serious violence, more must be done. That’s why, at the state level, I am proud to carry legislation making assaulting a retail employee or owner a class-D felony, such as with livery drivers, utility employees and other essential workers. This common-sense legislation will help deter crimes and hold people who perpetuate them accountable.
What small retailers and their advocates ask of the city and state are not difficult requests — they’re utterly reasonable. Let’s come together to support these stores and ensure workers are safe and consumers can shop in peace.
»New Yorkers seek to protect retailers against attacks«
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