Outraged NYC biz owners are fed up with Carl Heastie over refusal to crack down on violent shoplifters: ‘It’s open season’
NY Post
Furious Big Apple business owners are tearing state Assembly Speaker Carl Heastie to shreds over his refusal to beef up penalties for violent shoplifters, with some raging, “It’s open season on retail workers.”
Heastie (D-Bronx) sparked widespread outrage last week when he shut down Gov. Kathy Hochul’s plan to toughen sentences for the criminals, bizarrely declaring, “I just don’t believe raising penalties is ever a deterrent on crime.”
“How do you deter crime except by penalty?” said an enraged Nelson Eusebio, who heads the National Supermarket Association and Coalition to Save our Supermarkets, to The Post on Monday.
“Our workers are on the front line dealing with shoplifters and criminals,” Eusebio said. “It’s open season on retail workers in the city.”
An employee at a CVS on the Upper East Side — where a hammer-wielding shoplifter smashed a 37-year-old worker’s hand and several of the store’s windows in November in a fit when his crime was foiled — told The Post on Monday, “What can you do?
“Nobody wants to deal with it,” the employee said of the criminal violence, which has led the store “to lock up even the low-price products because of the quantity” of what’s taken during rampages.
