Governor Hochul and Small Business Owners Rally in Support of $45 Million Plan to Crack Down on Organized Retail Theft
Hochul: “I’m asking my colleagues in the Legislature to step up. This is who we’re fighting for. This is what we’re fighting for. This is an important fight to take on because the status quo, the lawlessness, the chaos that is going on in our stores, in our communities, all over the State of New York, it must stop. So, let’s step up and do it. We have a plan. We can get this done.” Earlier today, Governor Kathy Hochul was joined by members of the Legislature and small business owners from across New York to support a comprehensive statewide crackdown on organized retail theft. Governor Hochul’s anti-theft plan, included in her FY25 Executive Budget proposal, includes $25 million for a dedicated retail theft unit in the New York State Police, $15 million for District Attorneys and local law enforcement, and $5 million to cover security costs for businesses. It also includes new legislation to protect retail workers from assault and to crack down on online sales of stolen goods. VIDEO of the event is available on this page. A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below: Welcome. Good to see everybody. So proud to be joined today by some of New York’s hardest working small business owners, and the stresses they’ve been through. And I want to acknowledge some of the people who have joined us here today and I appreciate all of them for participating in this. Nelson Eusebio, Founder and Director of Collection Action to Protect Our Stores. Deborah Koenigsberger, the owner of a store in NoMad. Senator Jessica Scarcella-Spanton, the Senator, who can’t be with us. One of our sponsors, Assemblymember Manny De Los Santos from the Assembly. You’ll be hearing from him. Also want to acknowledge Senator Brad Hoylman, who is tied up in committee right now, but had hope to participate. County Executive Dan McCoy, Mayor Kathy Sheehan, District Attorney Mary Pat Donnelly and our friends from the District Attorneys Association. Friends from the Business Council and our hard-working business owners. Yes, let’s give yourselves a round of applause. If you run your own business, it’s hard to get away on a Tuesday morning. Who’s back running the shop, right? I know how that goes. I know how that goes. My mother had a little shop, and it was she and I. We weren’t in the shop, it wasn’t open. So, we understand the stresses, but all these entrepreneurs made a point to be here today to lend their time and their voices because organized retail theft poses a real threat to their livelihoods. And as Governor, I’m not going to stand by and watch brazen thieves wreak havoc in their shops and dismantle, destroy everything they’ve built. And I know how hard it is on their workers – sleepless nights, stressing over the next encounter with these menacing criminals. And sometimes, you’re then stuck paying out of pocket expenses for the broken windows, the broken locks, replace stolen items and all the extra security. It’s becoming a never-ending nightmare for business owners like Deborah Koenigsberger, who you’re going to hear from in a couple of minutes. And she’ll speak to us what it’s like owning two clothing shops in New York City’s NoMad District. Now, over and over, she’s seen thieves come in, scare her employees, and make off with literally hundreds of dollars’ worth of clothing all at once. She does her best to reassure her team and recoup her losses through a never-ending stream of insurance claims. You know, people like Deborah deserve better. They’re the lifeblood of our communities. They’re given to this charm, its vitality, its personality. And people represented by Deborah here all across the State of New York deserve to live and work in safety. And these incidents have become much more frequent. And as a result, there’s been a pervasive unease just seeping through our communities. It’s really unsettling when you walk into a store and see items that you thought you could purchase easily, locked up behind glass windows – or worse, you actually witness one of these sprees in person and not quite sure, are there weapons involved? Is it going to be harm to you and to the other customers? It’s high stress. And people think, you know what, I’ll just do it online. You know what that does to retail? It kills it. And we saw that during the pandemic, when so many people turned out of necessity to purchasing online. But it is the downtown communities that benefit from having retail shops open, their doors wide open, welcoming walking people in – the walking traffic. And so, foot traffic dwindles when people go online. Profits go down. People don’t look at other items in the store, right? And some businesses just can’t make it. And communities lose their identity and their vitality. This can no longer stand. It’s time to go after the organized retail theft rings the same way we went after the gun traffickers and car thieves. Here’s how we do it. We have a record of success launching specialized units, forming new partnerships, strengthening coordination between law enforcement agencies and elevating the role of the State Police. Now doing this, we drove down the sky high gun crime back to historic pre-pandemic levels, historically low pre-pandemic levels. And we used the same strategies to knock down car thefts in places like Rochester, we knocked it down 55 percent, down 45 percent in Buffalo in just a matter of months. Targeted strategies that work. But you know, we don’t fight crime by just throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks. We do it with precision and purpose. We zero in on what works. And that’s why in my Fiscal Year 2025 Executive Budget, I proposed more than $25 million to establish a dedicated retail theft team within the New York State Police. This will fund over 100 new State Police positions, investigators, troopers, crime analysts,
