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   From: trumptheluser01@hotmail.com   
      
   Shoplifters are so unconcerned with being arrested in the city that one of   
   them stopped to chat with The Post after ransacking a Manhattan drug store   
   — which is closing for good because of the out-of-control crime scourge.   
      
   The Rite Aid at the corner of 8th Avenue and 50th Street in Hell’s Kitchen   
   will close Feb. 8 because of the rampant pilfering, said store sources who   
   claim thieves have ripped off more than $200,000 worth of merchandise in   
   the past two months alone.   
      
   A Post reporter followed one brazen thief at the store last week, watching   
   him load four cases of beer into an oversize canvas bag in the back of the   
   store and stride out without paying.   
      
   A guard with the word “SECURITY” emblazoned on the back of his shirt   
   watched the thief as he walked out, but did nothing to stop him.   
      
   “Sometimes I feel bad for these guys in charge, you feel bad for the   
   security guys,” the thief told The Post outside the doomed store.   
      
   “I know I do wrong,” he said. “If they tell me put it back, I put it   
   back.”   
      
   But they almost never tell him to put anything back or stop him in any   
   way, said the man, a native of Senegal who lives in the Bronx, where he is   
   a union painter.   
      
   He said he was going to drink the beer with a friend who lives nearby. He   
   said he’s been stealing from stores like Rite Aid for months and has never   
   been arrested.   
      
   New York actor and comedian Michael Rapaport has also caught thieves in   
   the act. In a Tuesday social media post, he showed an alleged shoplifter   
   brazenly walking out of a Rite Aid on the Upper East Side with goods in   
   hand.   
      
   Store staffers say they’ve been told to tell customers the company is   
   simply “cutting costs.”   
      
   But the shocking epidemic of shoplifting around the city has devastated   
   this store, which sits across from two subway stations and has been a   
   staple of the neighborhood for at least 20 years. A Post reporter saw   
   other men shoplifting from the 24-hour location with ease at all hours of   
   the day and night last week.   
      
   “They come in every day, sometimes twice a day, with laundry bags and just   
   load up on stuff,” one store employee told The Post, as two other   
   employees stood by nodding in agreement. “They take whatever they want and   
   we can’t do anything about it. It’s why the store is closing. They can’t   
   afford to keep it open.”   
      
   The shoplifting epidemic has gone on unabated for months across the city.   
   In October, one crook was nabbed and is finally in jail after being let go   
   for his own one-man shoplifting spree in Queens, with 46 arrests. Retail   
   theft complaints in the city have jumped 36 percent from 2020 to 2021,   
   according to the most recent NYPD data.   
      
   State bail reform laws have made it easier for crooks to make off with a   
   cornucopia of products — from bottles of white wine to toothpaste and   
   mascara. Theft of anything under $1,000 is considered a misdemeanor, and   
   unlikely to result in much more than a slap on the wrist.   
      
   But crooks don’t even get that, because no one bothers to call 911, and no   
   one — including the in-house security guards — stops them, police and   
   store sources said.   
      
   Numerous employees at the store, including security guards, said their   
   bosses forbid them to engage the shoplifters in any way. Security guards   
   and store personnel at several other drug stores within a five-block   
   radius of the Rite Aid in Hell’s Kitchen told The Post the same thing.   
   They are forced to watch as thieves make off with loot.   
      
   “They don’t want us to get hurt,” said one employee at the Hell’s Kitchen   
   store, citing the clerk in a Los Angeles Rite Aid who was fatally shot   
   last year when he confronted two men leaving the store without paying.   
      
   Another clerk said the store is worried shoplifters will sue Rite Aid if a   
   staff member touches them or threatens them.   
      
   “If we say anything or try to stop them (thieves) and the store finds out   
   about it, they’ll fire us,” the clerk said.   
      
   “All you can say is, ‘Please, please don’t do that,’ ” said a security   
   guard at CVS at 49th and Broadway about the thieves who come in and   
   sometimes even tear off products that have been locked onto shelves. He   
   feels helpless, he said, “because everyone knows we can’t stop them.”   
      
   Beer and makeup are the most popular items to steal, store sources said.   
   Some items are resold on Amazon and some thieves bring items down to Penn   
   Station, where they hawk them to the homeless, sources said.   
      
   In some cases, stolen merch is flipped within minutes to nearby   
   businesses. A young man came into a restaurant across the street from Rite   
   Aid Thursday night with four green Palmolive detergent bottles hidden down   
   his pants, which he took out and appeared to sell to the establishment.   
   Another homeless man came into the same restaurant with a bagful of   
   beverages, including Red Bull, that he offloaded to the staff, The Post   
   observed.   
      
   A man carefully surveying the beauty products in a back aisle of the Rite   
   Aid Thursday night looked like a typical customer — except for the huge   
   canvas bag he carried over his shoulder.   
      
   He pointed to a big jar of an expensive organic clay cleanser, kvelling to   
   a reporter who was nearby that it was an excellent product.   
      
   “It’s really good, you should try it,” he raved, before popping the jar   
   into the bag he was carrying with other apparently stolen merchandise, and   
   walking out without paying.   
      
   Another man with two big bags slung over his shoulder spoke candidly about   
   how he works a store like Rite Aid.   
      
   “I go to the back,” he said.   
      
   “Insanity,” NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea tweeted last fall about the   
   soaring incidents of retail theft. “No other way to describe the resulting   
   crime that has flowed from disastrous bail reform law.”   
      
   Store customers, many of whom live in Hell’s Kitchen and have been coming   
   to this Rite Aid for years, were stunned when they saw the empty shelves   
   last week, learned the store was closing and heard the reason why.   
      
   “Tolerating this is going to create anarchy. It’s just so wrong,” said   
   actor and longtime Hell’s Kitchen resident Eric Schussler, 70, as he   
   walked past the empty aisles of Rite Aid Thursday. “There used to be right   
   and wrong in this country. We’re dealing with people who don’t understand   
   that crime pays. We’re in trouble.”   
      
   At least one criminal defense lawyer told The Post he almost never hears   
   of anyone who needs legal help these days for a retail theft arrest.   
      
   “It’s all politics,” attorney Arkady Bukh said. “A few years ago there   
   were arrests and prosecutions for shoplifting every day. Now there are   
   almost none.”   
      
   Left-wing US Rep Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY), whose district includes   
   part of the Bronx and Queens, has downplayed both the shoplifting crisis   
   in Manhattan as well as organized smash-and-grab retail theft groups in   
   California’s Bay Area.   
      
      
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