New York City’s high-end stores have become a target for looters as a gang of thieves stole $30,000 worth of clothing from upmarket sportwear brand Lululemon while a security guard stood by.
Seven thieves, believed to be aged from 30 to 50-years-old, entered the store on 14th Street and 9th Avenue with empty carts and laundry bags while the guard casually glanced over as they grabbed piles of clothing on August 16.
The brazen robbers, targeting the posh West Village neighborhood, rushed out of the store with their finds – without being apprehended by the security guard.
Store surveillance footage showed the thieves walk in and out the store around noon – looting thousands of dollars worth of merchandise as the seemingly unbothered guard, dressed in a white shirt and black tie, stood by.
The first thief left with a cart filled with goods while another struggled to put all the clothing he gathered in a bag right in front of the man – who didn’t move an inch.
Another woman ran out of the store with a filled bag. The group fled in an unknown direction.
The four men and three women involved in the Lululemon robbery remain at large as the string of robberies proceed to overrun the city.
This includes a perilous manhunt for a robber who pulled off multiple burglaries at high-end shops in the same areas that amounts to $62,000 in stolen merchandise.
New York’s shopping districts – including SoHo – have been under siege by robbers and looters in recent weeks, while law enforcement have been slammed for their lax approach to the crimes.
CCTV showed the unidentified thief breaking into a Rag and Bone shop on 104 Christopher Street on July 14 at 8.05am. He made away with $7,900 worth of clothing.
The suspect lurked outside the store’s front entrance before he shoved the glass frame and crawled inside the store. He then filled up a trash bag full of clothes before walking out without any alarms going off. The burglary lasted for five minutes, according to NBC New York.
Police described the suspect as a black man in his mid-thirties, possibly 35-years-old, five feet seven inches tall and roughly 180 pounds.
He was also seen wearing a black bob hat and a brown jacket in the footage of the Rag and Bone store theft.
The man was also seen in additional footage stealing $3,400 worth of clothing at Meermin Shoes on 123 Mercer Street at 6.20am on July 5.
The thief repeated similar offenses at five other high-end luxury stores in the West Village and SoHo, including the Bonobos store on Crosby Street, Christian Louboutin on the intersection of Horatio and Greenwich streets, Scotch & Soda on Bleecker Street, Loro Piana on Ninth Avenue, and A.P.C. on West 4th Street.
The suspect’s most profitable burglary was on July 17, when he stole an estimated worth of $26,500 in clothing from Christian Louboutin, the NYPD said.
All of the burglaries happened before or after store opening hours, often between the hours of 5am and 9am, except on one occasion when the thief broke into a Loro Piana shop at 1am on July 17.
Every break-in took place in a three-week span starting July 3 through July 23, as the thief would always burst into stores with no customers or staff around.
Police also revealed that the only store where the suspect didn’t steal from was the Loro Piana Boutique on Ninth Avenue.
Meanwhile, some security guards said they feel hopeless as the thieves take off with thousands in merchandise without consequences.
Marni manager Kristin Aureden told The New York Post that her associates just allow thieves to run free at their store located at 159-161 Mercer St.
‘We don’t confront. We don’t follow. We just let it go,’ Aureden told The Post.
Another security guard from the Dior store located at 105 Greene St., also said ‘There’s no sense in stopping people.’
‘You don’t know what they’re going to do,’ he said. ‘Not only that, everything is insured.’
Major crime in NYC is on the rise with a 35 percent increase since the same time last year, according to NYPD data. Robberies, grand larcenies, and auto thefts fueling the crime wave.
There were about 3,000 more robberies reported to NYPD in 2022 through August 21 than there were last year.
Felony assaults and rape are also slightly up from last year, but the number of murders and shooting victims has declined.
Mayor Eric Adams indicated he won’t be entertaining calls to decrease the number of cops in the city, but will discourage ‘heavy-handed’ policing from NYPD officers.
Police officers are part of the mayor’s ‘public safety apparatus,’ he said last week, adding: ‘You can’t remove police from this equation,’ which includes dealing with the issues around homelessness and improving the school system.
He added he doesn’t plan to stop talking about crime in the Big Apple, and said ‘I’m not going to be inconsistent and not talk about the violence that has happened in our cities every day.’
* Article from: The Daily Mail
