The soft-on-crime worldview finally said the quiet part out loud — and it took a Brooklyn socialist to do it. New York State Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher declared this week that shoplifters have a right to swipe soap and toothpaste from local stores without getting busted, because stealing those items proves a “biological need” for them. The New York Post reports Gallagher made the remarks Thursday at a news conference outside Manhattan Criminal Court, flanked by fellow lefty pols and activists from Court Watch NYC.
“Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty-people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap. And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them,” said Gallagher, a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America who represents Greenpoint and other slices of northern Brooklyn.
She wasn’t done. “And we are choosing to protect billion-dollar companies, like CVS and Walgreens, over the people who are struggling to get by. So I would say that the true crime is that there is such incredible wealth disparity in this city that there are people who can be thrown in jail simply for having a biological need.” The true crime, according to a sitting lawmaker, is that stealing is still technically illegal. Let that sink in.
Never mind that first-time shoplifting offenders rarely see a jail cell, or that the non-enforcement Gallagher champions is exactly why drugstores across the city now lock deodorant behind plastic cases. Her group also called on socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani to make good on his promise to end “broken windows” policing — even as NYPD numbers through Aug. 9 show retail theft down 14.7 percent and petit larceny down 5.4 percent precisely because someone is finally enforcing the law.
The New Yorkers who actually shop in these stores weren’t buying it. “It’s foolish to think one should not be punished for stealing. It is a crime,” Rev. Susan Webb, 68, told The Post at a Bronx supermarket. Store manager Edwin Pichado put the math even more plainly: “If they see that you do nothing, they’ll keep coming back. They tell their friends, and it becomes a free for all.”
Elected officials piled on too. “People like Emily Gallagher try to obfuscate reality because they want to enable this very activity,” Queens Republican Councilwoman Vickie Paladino wrote on X. Former Queens Councilman Robert Holden — a moderate Democrat — was blunter still, writing that Gallagher “is a major dope.” This is, after all, the same assemblywoman who once ran a GoFundMe for her cat’s vet bill while collecting a six-figure salary, and who has racked up dozens of traffic tickets while pushing an anti-car agenda in Albany.
This is a window into what happens when the activist class captures a major party in America’s largest city. When your elected representatives argue that theft is a biological function and the real villains are the pharmacies getting robbed, the shuttered storefronts and locked-up toothpaste aren’t an accident — they’re the policy. New Yorkers deserve leaders who protect the corner store, not the people emptying its shelves.
Source: nypost.com