NYC Gets Worse… Shoplifters Raid Costco

now according to the New York City report on retail theft there have been more than 38,000 Petty larsy cases in 2024 nationally 88% of retailers believe shoplifters have become at least somewhat more aggressive on top of that this Costco right over here the only one in Manhattan is being targeted relentlessly by thieves who succeeded in shutting down Manhattan's first ever Target just a few months ago which was located next store in this very same facility because in New York everything from a toothbrush to a handbag is a target for criminals who fear nothing they come here they steal they steal they steal and I told them they hurt in the neighborhood it is a body blow to this community for the people who shop here for the many people who work here where are the people in the community going to go now this 3:00 a.m. Breakin was the third time in two months that thieves targeted the Couture Trader store on Route 46 the thieves were in and out in 2 minutes retailers in New York State lose billions of dollars a year from retail theft and one company has had enough if if you shop at HomeGoods Marshalls or TJ Maxx you may now see store employees outfitted with body cameras a potential shoplifter goes into the store sees somebody wearing one of the tactical vests or a security vest with the body Cam and thinks okay I might get photographed many times I see people walking through the exit door we were surprised and caught flat footed when we heard the news yesterday morning it's sad because it's our own Community is the reason why it's closing and the long-term concern if Target's leaving who will do the [Music] same so the only Costco in Manhattan has a secret shoplifting problem but what nobody's talking about is that this very same neighborhood suffered a massive setback when the Target that was also in here closed just a few months ago hurting the development of East Harlem where over a 100,000 people live in this small slice of Upper Manhattan devoid of reliable public transit as there are very few Subway Lines and which neighborhood proponents say doesn't have enough rich people or enough fancy tourist attractions to attract enough police to keep the stores up here safe but even if we did have more police New York's laws protect our criminals instead of Prosecuting them and for every criminal arrested for shoplifting 10 more get released charges dropped by a progressive justice system that would rather look for the root causes of crime instead of the criminals actively committing those very same crimes but if that sounds ridiculous to you this entire situation gets worse every single day because today shoplifting is now 35% higher than it was just 3 years ago which is why every time you go to buy anything you'll find progressively more rows of progressive plexiglass supposedly to deter criminals which sadly don't seem to work anymore as the thieves have realized New York's no consequences environment gives them plenty of time to break through inore defense networks which brings us to the real reason the Costco and here now has a shoplifting problem since the target is gone the thieves have to Target something else and although Costco statistically has the lowest rates of inore theft of any major retailer in the city it's highly touted membership security brand loyalty and even their Incredible Pizza may not be enough to stop this Costco from suffering the same fate as [Music] Target so here we are inside Costco America's favorite Superstore except for maybe well Walmart look you can get that Kirkland Signature here and you can't get it anywhere else plus the environment here is completely different than our dystopian drugstores in fact none of the product here locked up behind anything there is heavy store security however in fact you're not even getting in without a membership which is very strange because you'd think if any store were to not have a shoplifting problem it would be Costco but when you see what was happening at the Target next store which is now gone it'll all make sense and not in a good way Target says it's closing this store citing rampant shoplifting that threatens the safety of employees and customers they come here they steal they steal they steal and I told them they so as you just heard theft was rampant at the Target that was right next door to this place and that's a problem at every store in New York and we're not talking about Aladdin stealing a little spam to feed himself no we're talking about retail theft Rings stealing things they can resell to make profit in fact theft is so bad in New York it now accounts for 4.4 billion of the state's economic activity where you've got items being stolen from physical stores and then resold online or at physical locations throughout the city for prices that are so low the items immediately sell giving thieves an immediate reason to return to the scene of the crime which they were doing at Target now at the time experts were writing articles praising Costco for not falling victim to retail theft the same way their competitors were because it's not just Target that's been closing locations Walmart's been doing the same thing along with Walgreens CVS yet somehow Costco's been able to keep its theft numbers lower than half a percent of inventory which helps them keep their prices lower but it just leaked that at this particular Costco the theft levels are surprisingly large and the items being stolen are equally surprising just take a look at the stuff getting stolen here everything from vacuums to vitamins to paper towels how are people stealing paper towels even the batteries here are way too large to easily sneak out of the store with and all the items getting stolen are things that you can easily resell on the internet and the crazy thing is that all the theft going on here was entirely predictable after we all saw what happened just a couple of months ago the closure of this target it is a body blow to this community for the people who shop here for the many people who work here and consider this this Target store it is the anchor store here at the East River Plaza and the long-term concern that many have is this if Target's leaving who will do the same so if a flagship store in a neighborhood shuts down that's going to cause a massive ripple effect not only through the other stores that are still here but also the neighborhood itself and if the Target that was here couldn't survive what chance do the other stores have especially now that it's gone and it's not bringing in all that anchor store traffic because even though there's a lot of business at this Costco specifically the other stores here that were B benefiting from the impulse buys that were happening at Target or just the basic non-membership required shopping the convenience all of that's suffering now on top of that the criminals that were robbing the Target now have to focus their energy somewhere else after all we're talking about organized retail theft it can't take a break just because the store where the inventory came from is gone it just means the inventory is got to come from somewhere else now but even though shockingly High numbers of theft are happening here at this very same Costco it's probably not going anywhere anytime soon because of how this place is run first of all most of the money cost Co makes doesn't come from the products they sell instead it comes from their membership fees those membership fees also give people a sense of loyalty they'll come here to buy anything that they were going to buy at Target as long as the oversized items will fit inside their tiny apartments and even though none of the products are locked up behind that Progressive plexiglass we love and have so much of here in New York you're not going to get out of the store with any of this stuff without someone stopping you and there's only one entrance and one exit and they're not the same it also doesn't help that the entire store is built like a massive Labyrinth of wall to--all deals that just kind of suck you in and keep you moving on top of that Staffing at Costco is significantly better than at most of its competitors at Target you won't even see any employees half the time sometimes the security booth is even empty but here you better believe they are watching you and then there's the sheer magnitude of some of this stuff everything here is oversized Warehouse sized whatever you want to call it literally nothing in the entire store is pocketable in any sense of the imagination which is also a huge crime deterrent because if you can't put this stuff in your backpack or in your pocket how the heck are you going to get out of the store with it and run down the street that's impossible in fact most people that shop here use their private vehicle I don't even think you can shop here without access to a car but probably the most shocking part of this whole story is that theft is even happening here to begin with and if it's bad here you know it's bad pretty much everywhere else in town and other stores are starting to take notice they've got shoplifting problems as well they don't want to end up like Target and have to shut down but because those stores aren't Costco with their oversized packs of Kirkland Signature tuna they're stuck doing something else to try and survive which is very surprising because the new plans and ideas being tested out at other stores could end up putting employees in [Music] danger so as you can imagine no store in New York City is safe from rampid shoplifting and TJ Maxx here no exception but apparently thieves have been so harsh on this place they've had to take some very Extreme Measures to keep stuff in the store but the problem is their new plan could be dangerous for employees if you shop at HomeGoods Marshalls or TJ Maxx you may now see store employees outfitted with body cameras parent company TJX says they've been rolled out in stores across the country so that is a very unique idea apparently these are the same body scanner technology that the police use and apparently what they're going to do is give you the same wide angle police perspective that happens when you watch 60 Minutes think of a security camera not attached to your house but attached to a person but although the company's now going to roll these out at select locations across the country local laws are really going to have the biggest impact on whether or not this is even effective because in New York City all of our laws call shoplifting a misdemeanor as long as it's under $1,000 worth of stuff and as long as the shoplifter was peacefully using the force when they forced all of those items through their security boxes and out of the store which automatically kind of makes this sound like an idea that will be of limited Effectiveness but hey it's worth a shot but there are other alarming aspects to having your employees strap on body cameras and follow people around the store that might be dangerous most stores have surveillance cameras so they're capturing these images to put an employee who is not necessarily trained to to fight crime like a police officer in position of getting close to these you know hoodlums just to videotape them seems like you're putting them at added risk I think so Chris I think it's a risk that they're neither trained for nor should this burden be placed on them they're not police officers they're not priv so the analyst here has a good point store employees they have enough to do with putting all of the items back on the shelves and keeping the store well running to put themselves at risk for Plato this new policy could end up making people's jobs more dangerous than they need to be and the worst part about it is it's being done in response to a problem that this city should be dealing with in fact it might not be possible to have enough store Security in the world to make up for the fact that the police force here can't do its job plus we've already got reports of store employees being attacked by emboldened shoplifters who feel entitled to everything in the store because in the crime economy someone who stops you from stealing is stopping you from making a living and providing for your family which is just not something criminals find acceptable and if you're wondering this is also the reason why stores like Macy's now have a bike cable with trip wire roping through their jackets to keep them from walking out of the store and selling themselves on Amazon and why at pretty much every store in town you'll find items behind lock and key in some manner yet nonetheless stores think there is going to be some value in equipping their employees with body cameras body cameras are currently used by certain loss prevention Associates who have gone through thorough training on how to use the cameras effectively in their roles body cameras are just one of the many ways that we work to support a safe store environment some think it's a good move it's utilizing the technology yeah I do I think this is a great idea as long as nobody gets hurt but how do we know that that's going to be the case how do we know everybody who wears a body camera isn't going to be at risk but it's at least somewhat relieving to see that the cameras won't be strapped to every employe instead it's the kind of thing that only the store loss prevention employees will be armed with cameras which means at least we're talking about arming people with these things who have the presumed training to be able to use them effectively and also not to get themselves into some sort of altercation with people who are stealing the things in the store also New York City just passed a law where it's now illegal to assault a store employee that makes your peaceful shoplifting spree a violent one and now it's a felony and there's a chance that these new rules could actually help protect employees who end up encountering somebody who might decide that they would get violent if it weren't for the cameras for example if the crooks are on camera attacking store employees this could help get a conviction which would hopefully get that criminal slapped with an ankle monitor instead of all the shoes in the store he says it can help upgrade a theft's charge to robbery if the foot footage shows the suspect using Force to shoplift it might deter it if the district attorneys are willing to prosecute there's always that catch right because we we find them we lock them up and then their release you know it's going to be a fail yeah so that's kind of a big deal since our district attorney who usually is the one pressing the charges has a habit of downgrading felonies to misdemeanors except for one recent high-profile case but other than that most criminals get their charges either downgraded or dropped or both now our district attorney says this is often done to free up the Court's time to go after more important criminals but this brings us to the real reason we've got an out-of-control shoplifting problem in this city and why it isn't just stores like Target that are in danger of shutting down if no one's willing to go after the criminals who are stealing things what chance do we have of stopping crime and if nobody's willing to hunt down the criminals who keep breaking the law won't they just keep doing it what's their reason for stopping and how effective are our new laws going to be if they won't stop people from going into stores and stealing whatever they want well there's no dancing around the fact that the answers to these questions are not exactly encouraging [Music] they're being told by the owners of the big chains especially stay out of it let them go I think they're facing a 15 to 20% decline in their sales customers aren't coming in and now they're looking for measures to augment the police it's a it's amazing where we where we are now as a society where that is ah just let them go don't worry about it everything will be fine honestly the situation here is so sad shoplifting is literally shutting down businesses and destroying our neighborhoods as mentioned TJ Maxx already losing customers probably because as operating costs go up they've got to jack up their prices to still make money which they then have to do a second time after the stuff inside the store gets stolen and sold somewhere that's not the store that paid for that stuff which is probably why less people can shop at the stores they're just too expensive for people who are already struggling with insane rents and grocery prices in this city but gets worse because these theft rings they're not just removing items from the store that the store needs to sell to stay open no they're then creating a competitor a lowcost competitor because they can resell that item on the Internet or at another physical store here in the city with basically no minimum cuz it's all profit and this is no exaggeration a local cosmetic store was doubling as a fencing operation reselling things that had been looted from Macy's and think about that how long is a store like Macy's going to even be able to stay open if people steal the things inside the store and sell them elsewhere for Less who's even going to shop there it also doesn't help that the Cosmetics fencing operation had a physical location kind of like this one right here right on the side of the street where customers would just walking and think they were making a legitimate purchase but this doesn't just happen in Shady little stores on the side of the street in New York in fact many times when we buy things on the internet they're much cheaper for a reason a reason called rampant retail theft it's true a lot of those little stores on Amazon eBay they're where this stuff ends up but when we see an expensive neigh brand item for half the price of what it sells for in a store we assume that that's just because this is an online business they don't have the same types of overhead a place like Macy's does and while that's true there's a reason the things you buy at Walgreens cost as much as they do yes having a store is part of the problem but you've got to remember the manufacturers of all of these name brand products they've got a minimum that they're going to accept and that's why when you look at something for sale on Macy's or at another big department store the price doesn't change a whole lot you've got to import these items you've got to pay the Customs you've got to buy them in a sufficient quantity to even get a low price all those costs add up into the cost the product that we eventually pay for would an online store be cheaper yeah but not by half unless of course the items are stolen in which case the thieves have an inventory cost of $0 they can list at any price they want and sell out because it's less than the real price which is the real reason why inore traffic is deining to begin with the criminal underworld selling Goods on the internet will always be cheaper which means the illegal shoplifting businesses in this country are always going to have customers as long as they're allowed to exist in fact the amount of customers they have only increases as more and more stores get shut down due to the theft that's causing all of these problems in the first place so why do we let this exist why are we here in New York happy watching our cost of living go up and up and up as the thieves steal the stuff we were going to buy and now it has to cost more is that what's going on here is that the problem what would you do to stop shoplifting here in New York would you lock up the criminals or would you lock up the deodorant just so nobody's feelings get hurt thanks for watching I'll see you in the next video

Channel: Cash Jordan

Views: 2,470,459

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Id: C_10mUjGD7A

Length: 16min 21sec (981 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 23 2024