New York’s ‘third world’ drugstore shelves empty amid wave of shoplifting

Thanks to a tsunami of shoplifting across the city, the bare essentials are now a rare luxury on New York drugstore shelves.

“It looks like the Third World,” lamented a Manhattan resident, after looking down the aisles of a CVS on Sixth Avenue in Soho desperately short of toothpaste, face wash and hand sanitizer, among a long list of other items.

“They were all stolen,” a CVS employee told The Post.

State bail reform laws make shoplifting a promising career option for some New York City crooks. A man, Isaac Rodriguez, 22, of Queens, has been arrested for shoplifting 46 times this year alone, The Post reported exclusively last week.

The blame goes straight to the halls of power in Albany, New York’s top cop Dermot Shea said.

“Insanity,” the police commissioner tweeted last week in response to the Post’s report. “No other way to describe the crime resulting from the disastrous bail reform law.”

Serial shoplifters, even if they are arrested, usually walk free on the same day. Cases against them often do not result in prosecution. Pharmacies, filled with aisles of small necessities, offer an easy-to-collect gold mine for thieves.

Rodriguez is said to have stolen from Walgreens stores 37 times, lifting everything from protein shakes and soap to formula and body lotions, often simply filling a bag with items and then walking out the front door without paying. .

There are currently 77 other thieves walking the streets of New York with reports of 20 or more shoplifting, according to NYPD sources.

As of September 12, the city had registered 26,385 complaints of retail theft – the highest number on record (since 1995). This is a peak of 32% compared to last year (20,024) and 38% compared to 2014 (19,166).

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Post reporters visited a dozen CVS, Duane Reade / Walgreens and Rite Aid stores in the city and found the same situation shocking in all of them.

Large expanses of sterile shelves, in some cases frighteningly empty of almost any need imaginable: cereal, batteries, hand washing, diapers, paper goods, and infant formula.

Good luck finding tampons. Each visit to the Post revealed almost none on the shelves. The displays of relative luxury goods such as lipstick and shoe polish also seemed overlooked.

Only 12 of the 57 paper products listed on price displays in a CVS on 50th Avenue in Long Island City were in stock. About 8 out of 10 clothing detergents were missing from the shelves of a Rite Aid on Broadway in Astoria; just like the 27 varieties of Ensure nutritional drinks and the 15 types of Irish Spring soaps and body wash.

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Two cops stood on guard inside the gates of the Duane Reade at the corner of B Avenue and East Second Street on the Lower East Side this week.

“There are a lot of thefts here,” said one of the officers, adding that they had made guarding the store part of their neighborhood patrol efforts.

The Wall Street Journal reported last month that retailers are the target of a wave of thefts of $ 45 billion by organized crime, with goods carried often being resold on Amazon.