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Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Now we'll talk about the 2023 version of shoplifting, especially in New York City or as The New York Magazine headline puts it, Why Everything at Walgreens is Suddenly Behind Plastic. Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg is aware, as he said on the show.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg: I live in Manhattan. I've had the experience of going to the pharmacy and what I want is-- I've got to get a clerk to open it for me.

Brian Lehrer: Yes, so that's real, but the subhead of The New York Magazine article is, the recent spike in shoplifting is both overblown and real, and almost everyone is profiting from it, including you. Joining me now is the writer of that very informative deep dive into the current shoplifting wave in New York City, New York Magazine staff writer James D. Walsh. This article is a very good read. It's about the intersection of the city's fentanyl crisis, organized crime, and yes, frustrated DAs. Here's Bragg again, from the show in November.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg: One of the most illuminating things we saw was, and this will put some data on what you just said, is that about 15% of the people arrested for shoplifting account for more than 50% of those arrests.

Brian Lehrer: 15% of the people arrested for shoplifting account for more than 50% of those arrests. We'll continue with more clips from DA Bragg to illustrate some of the things in the Fort Walgreens article by James Walsh. James, thanks for coming on for this. So many New Yorkers are thinking and wondering about it, and if they work in retail experiencing it. Welcome to WNYC.

James D. Walsh: Thanks so much for having me, Brian.

Brian Lehrer: Listeners, if you work in retail or have any shoplifting industry story to tell, and I think we're going to hear from James that it is an industry or a question to ask, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692. Maybe you're part of this underworld yourself. James got some of those folks to talk to him for his article. Call anonymously if you like and tell your story too, 212-433-WNYC, 212-433-9692, or set up a new Twitter account under any name you want, Elon Musk will let you do that, and tweet your underworld story @BrianLehrer. Let's start with a vocabulary word from your article, James. The word is boosters. What's a booster as it relates not to COVID vaccines, but to shoplifting?

James D. Walsh: Booster is the shorthand for a professional shoplifter, somebody who is shoplifting all day, most days, every day, bringing those products to a fence, who was the go-between the booster and the consumer or other fences. The booster is somebody who's really trying to-- it's not just the casual shoplifter that you might know. It's not the teenager. It's not the kleptomaniac even. It's somebody who's doing it for the purpose of making money.

Brian Lehrer: Is shoplifting even the right word because I think what comes to mind first is the teenager, as you say, who's grabbing something for their personal possession or something like that. This does seem to be an industry.

James D. Walsh: Sure. I think a lot of the confusion around this entire conversation is, I think, us in the media tend to flatten the term shoplifting, or use it as a catch-all for so many different things, but booster is really helpful because then we're really specifically talking about a certain particular shoplifter.

Brian Lehrer: One main point of your article is that boosters are usually drug addicts. Can you elaborate?

James D. Walsh: Sure. I spoke to a handful of boosters, and one of the questions I always ask them is, did you know somebody who was boosting for any other purpose than to support a drug habit? Between them or among them they knew hundreds, possibly even more boosters, and they really couldn't name anybody who wasn't doing it to support an addiction. I spoke to one booster who had developed a heroin addiction after he was prescribed opioids in college. He cut himself in college, prescribed opioids a few years later, he was living on the street boosting. I spoke to two other boosters who were fully addicted to heroin months ago until they were put in diversion programs and received treatment for that. There really is a close link between the opioid epidemic I found and the problem with shoplifting, I'd say.

Brian Lehrer: That is so fascinating. DA Bragg seemed to make that point too when he was here in November on this. He doesn't say drug addiction in this clip, he says mental health, but I suspect he's talking about the same thing. Tell me what you think after the clip. It comes just after the DA acknowledges the high recidivism rate.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg: We're not going to prosecute ourselves out of this. Prosecution is a piece of it, but for anyone who's been around for a while, and they've seen someone who's been arrested and goes to Rikers for 30 days or 60 days or something, and gets out and comes right back to the same location and does the same thing without the underlying issues addressed, for those who are being opportunistic to make money, that's one thing. For those who aren't, I think we see this in a very acute way now that in particular mental health issues are driving this, and so we need to be investing more in our mental health system.

Brian Lehrer: James, how much do you agree with that about underlying issues, as he put it, and how much is that consistent or inconsistent with the reporting in your article that you can't just prosecute our way out of this as the DA says?

James D. Walsh: Sure. I think that's really consistent with my reporting. Shoplifting is a symptom of many convergent forces. Two of those forces, I would say, three, you have mental health, you have the problem of drug addiction and the housing crisis, I would add. While a lot of people point to bail reform as a problem and for recidivism, as DA Bragg says, there's a lot of people who said you can't simply prosecute your way out of this. I would say the contributing factor pushing boosters to steal in the first place is really-- we need to address that before we can really take a larger view of the whole issue.

Brian Lehrer: We need to address the opioid crisis. We're going to do a separate segment sometime this week on the shocking number of fentanyl-related deaths in New York City that got reported for 2022. There's a spike in that. You see a relationship between the spike in fentanyl-- of course, if you're dead, you're not shoplifting, but in fentanyl use and addiction and the shoplifting spike.

James D. Walsh: I did not see the exact numbers because these statistics are, as I point out in the story, maddeningly hard to nail down, shoplifting statistics. I can't say that there's necessarily any causation, but when we talk about the long view of shoplifting over the past two decades, it certainly looks like it tracks alongside this twin problem of opioids.

Brian Lehrer: At least those boosters who you interviewed were all drug addicts, you say. Why did they talk to you, by the way? Why would a shoplifting booster talk to you about being a shoplifting booster if they know you're a journalist?

James D. Walsh: That's a great question. I spoke to one booster who was really on the path towards complete sobriety, looking for work. I spoke to a few others who are going through drug treatment programs and were really reflecting on the crimes they had committed and why they did it. I spoke to one booster who was really bitter about the way the fence he was selling to took advantage of him. He was really bothered by that and felt like the fence was taking advantage of his friends on the street, who are living on the streets and drug addicted.

Brian Lehrer: By the way, I mentioned in the intro the subhead of your article that says the recent spike in shoplifting is both overblown and real. We have a tweet from a listener who says, "This shoplifting industry has been happening for decades," suggesting that this is really not something new. The media just is on a kick about it. To the subhead of your article, how is it both real and overblown?

James D. Walsh: That's good. As I said, it's really hard to nail down these numbers. In fact, to the tweet you just read, I did speak with a police officer in Ohio when I asked about whether or not this spike in shoplifting was real or imagined, and he said something to the effect of while people are just really good with cell phone videos now, that the general public is just getting a taste of what police officers and people in the retail industry have known about for decades.

On the other side of that, retailers are really sounding the alarm on shoplifting that they say it represents $95 billion of losses in 2021 alone. I think the problem is more pervasive, more visible, but at the same time, the numbers just aren't there. The FBI's numbers aren't necessarily helpful to get a sense of the scope of the problem nationwide. Shoplifting is really an underreported crime. In fact, many large retailers have policies against calling the police when employees witness shoplifting so it just makes it difficult for us to understand how much of this is a media-generated crisis, and how much of it is really happening on the ground.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a retail store owner calling in. Paige in Brooklyn, you're on WNYC. Paige, thanks so much for calling.

Paige: Thanks, Brian. Yes, I own an independent jewelry store in Boerum Hill, Brooklyn, and shoplifting is something I'm really concerned about. The store was just broken into a jewelry store in Park Slope, and it took them 38 seconds to steal $2 million worth of diamonds. After that, I've upped my insurance. I get the ring into the store only. That's one thing because the first weekend I opened three years ago, we had $12,000 stolen right away and it's obvious this guy was professional, he knew we were new. He came in, confused us, was talking to lots of people. I had a friend who was in the store at the time, and he was like, "Oh, that guy was so charming." Wearing a baseball cap so the camera couldn't catch his face. He just grab the stuff, walked out, said he's going to check with a fiance about a price and walked out with $12,000.

It happens. I'm on a block on Atlantic between [unintelligible 00:12:34] and Bond, and there's a lot of independent stores. We have a text chain between all the store owners, which is really a wonderful community. We are texting and taking pictures of people who we've like, "This guy was in here last year, or around Christmas." There was a ring of people and they are like, "Oh, this woman comes in beforehand, and then someone will come in later, just beware." There's not much you can do when you just know that this person is in a ring with the shoplifting crew, what you can do except just keep your eye on them.

Brian Lehrer: It sounds like your experience and that of the stores on your block, is that something has changed in recent years. I think a lot of jewelry stores make you buzz in and have for years, it sounds like you didn't feel the need to do that at yours until recently. Your experience and your neighbors' stores' experience is that something has fairly recently changed.

Paige: Yes. It is something that the store owners and I we are all emailing or texting about all the time. One of the stores is a consignment store, and she has high-end bags, and that's something I guess that people go right after because they can sell it on the RealReal and other places. I'm curious if your guest has because people can sell things so easily now secondhand and especially things that have a name like a brand name if he thinks that makes a difference in people shoplifting certain items and going after it.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. James Walsh from New York Magazine, do you want to answer Paige's question?

James D. Walsh: Sure. You identified right there a lot of experts say there's a strong correlation between the rise of online retail and this apparent increase in shoplifting. A decade ago you might have assumed e-commerce would be the death knell of shoplifting. Without brick-and-mortar stores, we wouldn't have shoplifters. In fact, the internet has streamlined retail crime, and the practice of what they call E-fencing, which is selling stolen goods on eBay, Amazon, Craigslist, Facebook marketplace, you name it has made reselling these goods anonymously easier than ever. In many ways, it also drives wish lists for shoplifters. If you see something selling well on your online store, a fence can turn around and say, "I'd like these items stolen more for me, please."

Brian Lehrer: Paige, that was a perfect question to ask. Thank you and good luck out there. Tell us more about what you were just saying, James, what's the stolen goods supply chain like?

James D. Walsh: One of the cases I focused on was this New Liberty Loans. It's a pawn shop in the Diamond District. It was run by a guy named Roni Rubinov, who allegedly fenced millions of dollars worth of stolen goods. He would say, "We've got this particular moisturizer, it's selling well on this eBay store. I want more of this." He had about 30 or so boosters he was working with who would go out, sweep this moisturizer into a pillowcase and bring it to him. Then he would allegedly resell it on Craigslist. This is common. Law enforcement has talked a lot about the rise of organized retail theft. What that most often means is a fence sitting atop of a dozen or so boosters who are going out with laundry lists of things that they want to steal, just because they know it's going to sell well on these online retail stores.

Brian Lehrer: Let's hear another story from Arnold in Greenwich Village. You're on WNYC. Hi, Arnold.

Arnold: Hi. Thank you. I was in a situation and I guess 14th Street in New York City may be a mecca for this. I was in two drugstores that were robbed. One, the people working there took the initiative, and they fought with the person and got the stuff back. Another one, he just didn't give a damn. They just followed him out of the store and let them go, and asked a simple, "Why did you do this?" I said, "Because we're not allowed to bother anyone that's taking anything because I guess it's an insurance thing." One thing that I did leave out, you're dealing with drugstores.

When I was in the Apple Store on 14th Street where a guy was stealing, I guess some headphones and he was tussling on the floor with the person, and got the advantage and end up leaving the store with the headphones. While that was going on, a patron was stabbing one of the workers because the workers asked him to put on a face mask. That one I guess made the news, and I saw them bring this person down. I guess it's an epidemic. I guess I don't know if the Corona had anything to do with it, but people are definitely, they're not caring. When you go in a drugstore, you can't buy toothpaste now without asking the person to come over and open a case for you. That's very sad. Very sad really.

Brian Lehrer: Arnold, thank you. Thank you very much for chiming in. Didn't you have a quote in your article James of Reverend Al Sharpton saying on MSNBC, "My toothpaste is behind glass now in the drugstore?"

James D. Walsh: Exactly. He was calling on the mayor to do something about it. "They're locking up my toothpaste."

Brian Lehrer: Well, are stores closing as a result? My local Rite Aid in my New York City neighborhood is shutting down after decades in the neighborhood. An article on Patch implies it's because of shoplifting without quite saying it. Are retailers literally going out of business because the shoplifting industry is winning?

James D. Walsh: Retailers are saying that they are going out of business considering closing shops because of it. There's reason to be skeptical. We've really only have data supplied by retailers, who are also fighting for their lives against Amazon and people ordering products online. Exactly what economic force is driving their closing stores, we can't really say. I do want to say that I think one thing that we're missing here is that employees bear a lot of the burden of this. They are--

Brian Lehrer: As that caller was just describing, right?

James D. Walsh: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Employees tussling with shoplifters plus that awful anecdote about somebody over wearing a mask, but certainly over shoplifting. He also said that one of the restrictions here or one of the things that enables the boosters, the shoplifters to get away with it is that insurance dictates that a lot of the store security guards and other personnel don't physically encounter the shoplifters.

James D. Walsh: Yes. I think there's a lot of logical reasons beyond insurance that stores wouldn't want their employees to engage in crime fighting. Tthat makes sense.

Brian Lehrer: Like getting killed.

James D. Walsh: Yes, certainly and it's much easier to let them walk out the door. I did speak with one small business owner downtown Ken Gideon. He owns Rothman's, the menswear shop near Union Square, and last year, or at the end of 2021, I believe culprits these groups of shoplifters made away with something like $20,000 worth of merchandise after the store was hit twice by groups of shoplifters and Ken said to me, it's getting to the point where somebody's going to get killed. Somebody like me is going to fight back and so he owns menswear shop that now keeps their doors locked, just like Cartier at all times.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a tweet from a listener who writes, "A store owner in Queens, thought my friend and I were shoplifting which was not even close. He physically assaulted me, attempting to grab my bag. I calmed the situation. He explained his distress at the rash of theft. He apologized but it was freaky." Assuming that story is true, that's how it comes out the other side sometimes, I guess.

James D. Walsh: Oh, yes. I imagine. My story doesn't even really go into the issues of profiling and in this peak titan where everybody's on the lookout for shoplifters, imagine it's pretty easy to think about all the ways that can go wrong.

Brian Lehrer: James Walsh from New York Magazine is my guest. His article is called Fort Walgreens and you're describing the supply chain, the low-level booster. Often a drug addict takes individual things from a store. It might be a jewelry store, it might be handbags, it might be stuff from a drug store, sells it up the chain to a fence and often they get sold online on eBay or elsewhere these items. Again, Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg from this show in November after he talks about the importance of mental health treatment for the small fish in this supply chain.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg: Then fencing investigations which will hopefully make those are doing this at a high level, the transaction cost and they don't think they've priced in the prospect of criminal prosecution. I think that that should have a significant deterring effect when we're able to bring those cases down.

Brian Lehrer: Here's a little more from DA Bragg on how you do that.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg: The other issue that we're doing that hopefully there's more to come on, is I'm a very significant believer, and you got to follow the money and you got to follow the contraband. I've been doing that for 20 years in cases. The money in the contraband leads you to the most culpable people, you hold them accountable and then you can get more enduring public safety benefits, so we have a number of investigations into fencing. People who are taking this, there's a secondary market and if we can turn the spigot off to that market I think the people who are doing it in the opportunistic way to make money, we can really have a dent in that.

Brian Lehrer: James, the DAs, especially Bragg, get so much go from the New York Post and others about what they're not doing on this as if they're just la di da soft on crime, prefer not to incarcerate people, to keeping people in property safe. What's your take in your article?

James D. Walsh: My take in my article is that this is a very complex issue and far more complex than as you said, the New York Post has made it out to be. I think going after fences, as the DA says, is really a smart move and I think a lot of people that Mayor Adams included, have been putting pressure on online retailers in recent months and in years to do something about this and to address this prevalent problem on their platforms and in fact, last month, federal lawmakers approved legislation that requires platforms to verify sellers their identities if they're selling a lot of merchandise. They're hoping that this implementation of these stop gaps and these checks on online sellers will then we'll see that at the street level but at the same time as long as we have an opioid crisis and a housing crisis I imagine boosters will want to be taking advantage of that and to make money to feed their habits.

Brian Lehrer: Put on Twitter rights, I guess exemplifying or describing some of the problems as they see it would rather buy from Amazon than wait for someone at CVS to unlock the deodorant case and there you go, so that enables too, right?

James D. Walsh: As my colleague at Curbed, a few days ago wrote that sales of products drop 70 to 80% when they're locked up behind that plastic. People are impatient especially now that you can get something the next day off of Amazon.

Brian Lehrer: Yes. Wow. Is the New York State bail reform a factor or is this happening in other major cities similarly in places where there was no recent bail reform law?

James D. Walsh: If you talk to law enforcement, if you talk to any geek cop in Times Square or Harold Square, I think they'll tell you that, of course, bail reform is a factor. They see the same people being arrested over and over and as DA Bragg said earlier in the show by the end of 2022, let's see well, the numbers we have it's a quarter of shoplifting arrests were committed by, I think 327 people. That's 6,600 arrests in 2022. It's 327 people. It's hard to deny that bail reform laws aren't a factor but are we going to do away with these reforms that benefit lots of people just because of a relatively small number of recidivists are committing this petty larceny? That's a larger conversation.

Brian Lehrer: Let's take one more story about a booster from Kabir in East Setauket. Kabir. you're on WNYC, thank you for calling in.

Kabir: Hi guys. How's your day? The reason--

Brian Lehrer: Oh boy, Kabir's breaking up. Do we have you at all?

Kabir: I'm renting.

Brian Lehrer: I think it's not going to work. We'll have to try it another day, Kabir, I'm sorry. Instead, here's one final clip of DA Bragg here in November, in which he speaks about his own frustrations with the criminal justice system and how it doesn't allow him to crack down on repeat shoplifting offenders.

Manhattan DA Alvin Bragg: An issue that doesn't get talked about a lot more broadly is the issue of discovery. The information we need to turn over to the defense in order to go ahead with the case and system-wide throughout the state, we have very significant information technology issues. We've gone to other stakeholders and as a group actually both defenders and prosecutors that we need more resources. Last year, Brian, so this predates me as DA but more than 1800 misdemeanor cases were dismissed because of discovery issues.

Brian Lehrer: Do you understand the issues around what they call discovery James or do we need to do a separate segment with a law professor or something on that?

James D. Walsh: Yes, I think there's somebody probably above my pay grade you need for the discovery conversation.

Brian Lehrer: All right. As we start to run out of time, do I remember correctly did somebody from Walgreens tell you for your article that the issue is being exaggerated in the press?

James D. Walsh: No, that's not quite. Somebody from Walgreens actually I believe their CFO, right before we published, got on a call with shareholders and said, you know what, maybe we overstated the problem.

Brian Lehrer: Oh, that must be what I'm thinking of, yes.

James D. Walsh: All right. They have this number shrink, the all-important number. That's the number that they use to calculate how much of their products was lost due to employee error, employee theft, or shoplifting, and they were looking at that number a year ago talking about shoplifting being this really, really big problem but by the end of the year, it's stabilized and they come out and say, you know what, actually maybe shoplifting isn't so bad.

Brian Lehrer: That's weird, especially if all these stores are closing and it's so easy to get people to call in and tell these stories. I don't know, maybe perception is driven by news coverage but I don't know. How do you understand based on the reporting that you did and the supply chain that makes this easier than ever to make money on because of how easy it is to sell stolen goods online? How does that square with the CEO of Walgreens saying maybe we overstated it?

James D. Walsh: It seems to me that I think if you look back, every generation has their shoplifting freakout, and where in the past it's been concentrated on the loan shoplifter, the kleptomaniac, the famous celebrities shoplifting. Now I think we're looking at it more as the societal problem. It's like we said the conversions of all of these forces. Now how much of that is new? I can't say but I still think it's worth investigating and understanding.

Brian Lehrer: James Walsh gives that his best shot in his New York Magazine article, Fort Walgreens. Thanks for coming on and sharing it with us. We really appreciate it.

James D. Walsh: Thanks so much for having me.

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