NY- After $200,000 in Shoplifting in Two Months Riteaid is Closing

Podcaster and leftist actor Michael Rappaport put a Rite Aid in Hell’s Kitchen on the map yesterday because he filmed a shoplifter taking merchandise and leaving the store.

What did I just witness?

Dude went straight shopping pic.twitter.com/0vQRCpGsVv

— MichaelRapaport (@MichaelRapaport) January 25, 2022

It turns out the store is closing because of all the shoplifting:

‘These criminals know there are no ramifications. We have to put more of these mfers in jail,’ he said.

The Rite Aid in the video, on 80th Street and 2nd Avenue, is hit with thefts of the same nature on an almost daily basis, a security guard told Rapaport. The store will be closing on February 15, and 63 other locations will close in the coming months with thefts a major reason, the pharmacy chain announced in late December.

‘You see all these videos on Instagram of people shoplifting like they’re going for a walk in the park. It’s pathetic that this is happening in the greatest city in the world,’ Rapaport said.

Well, what is the definition of insanity? Doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result

You vote for soft-on-crime politicians you get crime. Now people will suffer instead of the criminals:

The actor said he relies on that Rite Aid, where he buys his mood stabilizers, and that he and many others in the community are now losing their neighborhood pharmacy – and its workers are losing their jobs – because of the rampant shoplifting.

‘These people are gonna be out of a job because of guys like this scumbum,’ he said, using the invented word as a combination of ‘scumbag’ and ‘bum.’

The Rite Aid will close on February 8. Sources said shoplifters “have ripped off more than $200,000 worth of merchandise in the past two months alone.”

An employee explained: “They come in every day, sometimes twice a day, with laundry bags and just load up on stuff. 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.”

A New York Post reporter followed one shoplifter last week. He had no problem speaking to the reporter because no one would arrest 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.

I mean, why bother worrying? Employees and security guards informed the Post that “their bosses forbid them from engaging the shoplifters in any way”:

“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.”