New York Organized Retail Theft Declines 12 Percent Year-Over-Year: Hochul

Organized retail theft in New York state is down over the course of the last year, with the decline attributable to increased enforcement, discovery reform and community engagement.

Gov. Kathy Hochul announced Tuesday that there have been over 1,000 arrests and millions in stolen inventory recovered. This has led to a 12 percent decrease in organized retail theft incidents between the periods of Jan. 1 to Aug. 24 in 2024 and the same time in 2025. It also coincides with an overall drop in crime.

Murders, for example, are down 21 percent in New York City and 19 percent across the state, according to Hochul.

“We went at this pretty aggressively with the legislature and I made a vow — these people just came through a lot, they came through the pandemic and they certainly don’t need their inventory stolen right before their eyes,” Hochul said in a press conference. “Plus there was a high number of retail workers assaulted, and in my opinion, the laws did not protect them adequately.”

Hochul’s administration has allocated about $3 billion to all aspects of law enforcement since taking office in 2022, assigned 100 people from New York’s State Police to Mayor Eric Adams office and imposed higher penalties on those found guilty of assaulting retail workers.

Hochul’s office also cracked down on third-party sellers of goods raided from stores, and provided tax credits to brick-and-mortar operations to offset the costs of upgrading security measures, according to Hochul.

On the prosecutorial side, reforms allowed district attorneys to add up the total value of stolen retail goods from different stores to reach a higher larceny threshold, increasing penalties for organized theft operations.

“In recent months, many storefront businesses have told us they feel the difference and that New York has turned a corner on bringing down crime and addressing retail theft,” Manhattan Chamber of Commerce President and CEO Jessica Walker said in a statement. “There is more work to do but we are thankful that Governor Hochul’s legislative policies on retail theft and discovery reform appear to be working as we had hoped.”

As the pandemic abated, the new crisis of organized retail theft became a national concern with groups of people clearing shelves in stores, packing the stolen goods into getaway cars, and selling it through fence operations and online.

It became prevalent enough that major retailers like Target began closing stores in September 2023, including an East Harlem location, largely due to theft rings targeting those operations, even if there was lingering debate about how serious the trend was becoming.

Mark Hallum can be reached at mhallum@commercialobserver.com.