RAFAEL: SHOPLIFTING.

ONCE CONSIDERED A PETTY CRIME, IT IS NOW A MULTIMILLION DOLLAR INDUSTRY THAT HAS FORCED RITUAL STORES AND PHARMACIES TO LOCK UP EVERYDAY ITEMS LIKE TOOTHPASTE AND SHAMPOO.

TOMORROW WE WILL HEAR DIRECTLY FROM A SHOPLIFTER TO UNDERSTAND HOW HE FELL INTO THIS LIFE OF CRIME.

BUT FIRST, WE WILL EXAMINE THE ROOT OF THE PROBLEM TONIGHT TO, UNDERSTAND EXACTLY HOW RETAIL THEFT HAS BECOME AN ORGANIZED CRIME RING, AND WHO IS PROFITING MOST FROM IT.

THIS SPECIAL THOUGH CORPORATE ADDITION OF "METROFOCUS" STARTS RIGHT NOW.

♪ ♪ >> THIS IS "METROFOCUS," WITH RAFAEL PI ROMAN, JACK FORD, AND JENNA FLANAGAN.

"METROFOCUS" IS MADE POSSIBLE BY -- THE PETER G. PETERSON AND JOAN GANZ COONEY FUND, FILOMEN M. D'AGOSTINO FOUNDATION, BARBARA HOPE ZUCKERBERG, AND BY JODY AND JOHN ARNHOLD, BERNARD AND DENISE SCHWARTZ, DR. ROBERT C. AND TINA SOHN FOUNDATION, THE AMBROSE MONELL FOUNDATION, ESTATE OF ROLAND KARLEN.

♪ RAFAEL: GOOD EVENING AND WELCOME TO "METROFOCUS."

I AM JACK FORD.

THERE IS A REASON WHY YOU HAVE BEEN SEEING EVERYDAY PRODUCTS, EVEN INEXPENSIVE ONES, LOCKED BEHIND PLASTIC AT YOUR PHARMACY WHEN YOU GO SHOPPING AT THE BIG GAME RETAIL STORES IN NEW YORK CITY.

IT'S BECAUSE RETAIL THEFT IS SKYROCKETING NOT JUST HERE.

THE NYPD reported a 66 percent increase in retail theft-related complaints since 2019, but all across America.

According to the National retail Federation, it has ballooned into in $94 billion epidemic, one that has forced store closures, lead to layoffs, and cost cities and states millions of dollars in lost tax revenue.

But what is driving the dramatic increase?

Are more people being forced to steal to put food on the table, or are organized fencing operations to blame?

And what impact have bail reform and the pandemic to do with this?

Here to discuss is the senior editor of the City Journal, Steve Malanga, and senior fellow the Manhattan Institute.

Let me start with the question,o what I talked about in the introduction.

You have done a lot of reporting on and one of the things you have said is, this is not the old-fashioned shoplifting, kids stealing candy from a store.

This is far different from that.

What is this?

Steve: Much of the increase we have seen in the last five years or so, which is almost a doubling of the problem, is what is now known as organized retail theft.

There is a lot of reasons for this.

One reason is that basically with the rise of online selling, online marketplaces like Amazon and so forth, thieves have ways of disposing of large amounts of stolen merchandise.

And as a result, it's not like the old situation where if someone stole a bunch of stuff at a store, they drove around in their car and tried to sell it out of the back of their car.

Now, you have an actual way of disposing of this merchandise and so that has helped stimulate the problem.

Jack: When you talk about this, there are different titles given to the folks involved.

You talk about boosters, fences.

Give us an explanation of those terms and how they play out here.

Steve: This goes back to the notion of organized.

Essentially you have gangs -- first of all, you have people who go into the stores and take the merchandise.

And then, when the merchandise is brought to a central location, it has to be what they call "cleaned."

It means you take off other retail tags and everything like that.

Then it has to be processed and put online by people with that kind of technical know-how and sold.

And when the money comes in, because it is illicit funds, that money has to be what is known as laundry.

You're talking several steps.

That's what makes this organized retail theft.

Jack: So this is not a kid stealing some candy from in front of the counter, if you will.

A lot of people, and I am wondering how you think this enters into this explosive growth of retail theft.

If you ask most people on the street, I suspect they will say to you, come on, it's shoplifting.

Who gets hurt here?

Instead of selling 100 pieces of candy, they will sell 99 pieces.

What is the fallacy in that thinking?

Steve: First of all, I would say that just shoplifting, it is behind one of the other motivations for this, which is, in the last 10 years, about half of all states have raised the amount of money by which if you shoplift, you can be charged with a felony.

So now, a lot of shoplifting, under $1000 or $1500 is just considered a misdemeanor.

A lot of stores around the country began reporting increases in this kind of theft as those laws were changed.

In addition, what happened is we also changed our bail laws.

Without well, if people are just doing, we don't want them sitting in jail because they can't raise bail.

As a result of that, we now have a lot of repeat offenders.

One fellow in New York City in 2021 was arrested 46 times in less than a year for shoplifting.

Every time he was arrested, he was brought to the station and then he was let out and arrested again.

In some cases, he was arrested in the same day when he was let out.

He would shoplift again and he was arrested.

So there is a perverse of sentencing, if you will.

Jack: I am in former prosecutor and former defense attorney.

You look at these scenarios bring out and it sounds as if, when you talk about dropping down the dollar amounts -- now you're just talking about misdemeanors, and often times they will get played down to lower than that, sometimes even orders violations.

And the notion of bail reform that says we are not really looking at how many times you have done stuff and if you're talking about violent crime, we will let you out.

Basically, it sounds like people are saying, what do I got to lose here?

It will pull me in, I will pay a fine, meantime I am making money off of this, I am not going to go to jail.

And I will just make my theft under, that would make it $900 rather than $1000.

Is that the scenario you described>>?

Steve: Yes.

One security expert because this kind of retail theft low-risk, high reward.

Is the wrong kind of incentive.

You as a prosecutor will understand this, when this kind of nonviolent activity accelerates, eventually, it creates problems, including problems with violence.

Jack: I was going to ask you about that.

Once again, U.S. people on the street, they will say, come on, it's just shoplifting.

It's a harmless offense.

Nobody gets hurt.

.

I suspect if you are to them, they would say, there is no violence involved in shoplifting.

What is the problem?

Steve: First of all, we just saw a slight uptick in this, button, as people recognized, again, the low risk -- first of all you have these flash mobs that run into stores.

Then you have people coming back several times a day and the store personnel actually know who they are and so they begin to try to stop them.

And all of those things lead to confrontations.

We have had three or four security guards around the country who have now been assaulted and killed trying to stop this.

In New York City, in Times Square just a couple of months ago, we had a shoplifter who got into a confrontation with an employee and they got into a fight, and the shoplifter died.

And the employee is now arrested, right, and charged -- potentially being charged with murder.

So, on top of that, we have had a number of people both in New York City and in places like San Francisco, just as residents of these cities when they go into stores now, they feel a heightened sense of dread because they see what is going on around them.

It's a sense of disorder is growing.

That's is what scares them.

Jack: I would suspect people have seen videos of these flash mobs bursting in, a lot of people are saying, I am not going into these stores.

Which, as you said it's costing billions of dollars.

In one of your articles you talked about, I think it was target and the number they had estimated for their losses?

Steve: $500 million for the year in retail losses as a result.

Here is the thing -- that is one thing.

And we all pay for that.

If you go back to the idea that you said, it's just shoplifting, a lot of people don't associate prices in stores with losses like that, but that is part of it.

But, it is getting so bad that we are at a new stage.

The new stage is, retailers are closing stores in certain cities and certain neighborhoods where this is endemic, because they can't stop it.

The head of the Duane Reade stores in New York City talked about how it's almost impossible these days to stop shoplifting.

They have begun closing stores.

Target is closing stores -- Target, Walmart, Whole Foods, places like San Francisco, Baltimore and Chicago.

What we are heading back to, which really bothers me, is an era which I reported on years ago because I have been around for quite a while -- [laughs] -- when whole neighborhoods and cities lacked basic stores, drug stores and supermarkets, we got past that with the revival of cities in the late 90's and 2000.

Resolve retailers coming into these locations.

Now, they are shutting down.

In Times Square alone, two retail drug store chains have closed, two of the three that were in Times Square have closed in the last year or so.

So we are heading back to the situation where we are lacking basic services insert neighborhoods.

Jack: One second, illustrating the fallacy of this "harmless" title.

Neighborhoods are living services.

People are losing jobs.

-- neighborhoods are losing services.

People are losing jobs.

What has been the impact of the Internet on all of this, do you think?

Steve: Clearly, it supercharges fencing.

Fencing is how you distribute this merchandise.

So, number one, it allows that, through the selling of these online forums and marketplace.

The government is trying to tighten up that kind of setting by demanding more information from people, demanding companies like Amazon which sponsor these sites, get more information about where this merchandise is coming from and so forth.

But in addition to that, what has happened is, you have the situation where you can just reach so many buyers.

OK?

And rather than boost -- even organized crime in the 1950's and 1960's, they would drive the truck somewhere, if you have seen the "Sopranos" you have seen this -- Jack: We have seen it in many episodes.

Steve: Exactly.

But we are now beyond that.

The Internet has done that.

Beyond that, on social media, there are now kind of forums on how to make money shoplifting.

What are the best stores to go to.

Or why Walmart is easy to shoplift.

Or why this supermarket chain is hard.

It's the information age, I guess, and it includes all kinds of information.

Jack: Another illustration of the fact that the Internet is wonderful, except when it isn't.

[LAUGHTER] I have about a minute or have here -- we are seeing some steps being taken locally, even proposals in the federal government to deal with this.

Give your so quick sense of some of those.

Steve: The local steps are what is most important.

I think we have to tighten up Bill laws so that -- bail laws, so that offenders understand that excavating creates problems for all of us.

That's number one.

The police have become, in many places, dispirited because they arrest people and they go right back on the street.

The federal government can do certain things.

They are not going to fix it.

We have to go community by community.

Jack: We're seeing it in Queens, seems to be a model program, partnership between businesses and law enforcement that, according to the numbers, seems to be working a bit?

Steve: Yeah, there are a couple of places where this works.

.

But again, businesses, for instance, lobbied the federal government, they can do the lobbying they want.

They are not law enforcement.

At some point, what they do is they bail.

That is what they are doing now.

They are just closing the stores.

♪ >> Good evening and welcome to "MetroFocus."

I am River Fire.

-month period as has been the case for many years, New Jersey has the highest property taxes in the nation.

Now concerns over residents leaving New Jersey in search of lower taxes have apparently caused elected officials to pass a new tax relief plan specifically claimed that keeping out elderly residents in the state.

The plan called "StayNJ," Instacart property taxes and have for most of the states seniors.

But it doesn't take effect until 2026, leaving critics to question whether the payout will actually happen.

Joining us to talk about natures is new property tax credit and more, is "MetroFocus" contributor and host of "state of affairs" Steve Adubato.

Welcome Steve: To the program.

Steve: Thank you.

Rafael: Property taxes have been as high in New Jersey as far as I can remember.

But the problem of people leaving New Jersey in search of lower taxes, that is new to me.

You can tell us, how big is that problem?

Steve: It's real.

You know Florida better than most.

Florida does not have an income tax.

It's anecdotal, but I have lost count of the number of friends and contemporaries of mine who have left the state to be in Florida for more than half the number of days in the year, which then means you don't pay any income tax.

That is a big deal.

And so New Jersey is losing a whole range of disproportionately middle and upper income people to other states who have lower taxes, or in the case of Florida, no taxes.

It is real.

Every time I have interviewed Governor Murphy, he argues that the statistics don't back it up.

Anecdotally, I have to tell you, it feels very real to me.

Rafael: How is the new law supposed to work?

Who is eligible for tax break and how much are those who are eligible going to be getting?

Steve: Let's be clear, Governor Murphy, when this was proposed, the "StayNJ" property tax rebate or tax credit, when it was proposed by State assembly Speaker Kaufman, you know this because you covered it, Governor Murphy said no.

I am against this.

And Governor Murphy at the time said not only could New Jersey not afford it, not only was it geared towards upper income New Jerseyans, he said, I will get this benefit as a multimillionaire, which Murphy is -- he says I am willing to potentially shut the government down by not signing this budget on the last day of June which is when the constitution says the budget has to be struck.

Then, all of a sudden, there was a negotiation and it got done.

So here's the deal, if you earn less than $500,000, you are eligible for this tax credit, up to $6,500 in tax credit.

The average property tax bill is $9,500 a year.

So if there is up to a 6500 dollar tax credit, it potentially cuts property taxes in half for a large number, 90% plus of all New Jerseyans.

Then all of a sudden Governor Murphy was for it, he signed it, it passed unanimously in the Senate, virtually everyone voted for it in the assembly.

No one wants to be against a tax cut in an election year, and that is what happened.

Jack: One of the biggest criticisms of StayNJ is that it will disproportionately benefit wealthy homeowners.

The Center on budget and policy priorities, a Washington-based nonpartisan research group called it "an unsustainable tax cut for the 1%.

Is that a fair characterization?

Steve: Originally, it would have been.

I know this sounds crazy, but once you moved it down to $500,000 or less, it changed a lot.

Because it's not 1%, it's a different number than that.

But the reality is this, here's what I am most concerned about -- I am more concerned that New Jersey can't afford it.

I am more concerned that the federal aid tied to the pandemic is dried up.

I am actually concerned that, why are we doing this in the beginning of 2026, if it is such a good idea?

if New Jersey can afford this tax credit, why aren't we doing it now?

We are not doing it now.

We are doing it with the next governor takes over, because Murphy will be gone by then.

I don't know if the state is going to have the money to do it, and I seriously question whether it will ever become a reality.

Rafael: So that is a question, but maybe then we have the answer as to why Murphy changed his mind about the bill.

Steve: Steve: Not on my watch.

Not on my watch.

Rafael: But if it is postponed to the next administration, and I believe the next administration has the prerogative to follow it or not, I mean, what are the chances this thing will ever be implemented really?

Steve: So, raf, you and I are not big on political prognostication?

Who could have pretty today global pandemic?

I think the odds are not in favor of this become reality because I think New Jersey's political picture will change significantly in the next three years.

It will be a lot tighter.

The surplus will not be there.

The federal money will not be there.

I am concerned about income tax and sales tax revenue.

And I believe the $1.3 billion it will cost to fund this state New Jersey tax credit give back, I believe it will be very hard to find that many in January of 2026.

Rafael: Well, this tax credit is part of the $54.3 billion state budget that was passed, which is a 7% increase from last year's budget, and a 45% increase from the first budget Governor Murphy signed into law in 2018.

So the state must be flush with cash for now and the foreseeable future, if, on this election year they are passing this generous budget with this general tax code.

Where are my wrong?

Steve: Are you saying that with a straight face, my partner and friend?

[LAUGHTER] So, here is the way I see it.

I give Governor Murphy a lot of credit, and the legislature, for fully funding the public employee pension fund.

Without getting deep into the weeds of this, you and I who follow government policy well, know that the state pension fund is underfunded.

It's a huge liability.

But, to Murphy's credit, they paid into it.

That is a good thing.

If you don't.

, the interest rate down the road would have been too high.

However, this give back, this StayNJ give back, in my view, it's not smart public policy.

The governor was originally correct when he said this is not smart fiscally.

Even though changes were made and amendments were made and modifications were made, negotiated, it's still a mistake.

This budget, bigger than ever, miscalculate the future.

I am a fiscal conservative when it comes to my own family funds, meaning, you have to think worst-case scenario.

You have to be conservative.

You can count on all of this money coming again.

.

It's not coming from the feds anymore.

I believe it mistake was made in increasing the budget to this degree, at this time.

It was not smart fiscally.

Politically, may.

But not fiscally.

Rafael: All that being said, to be fair, there are some things, as you said -- I remember when we were doing the program, having the public pensions funded.

Steve: It was a big deal.

Rafael: That seems to have been taken seriously.

Steve: More money for child care, for pre-k, allegedly more money, sorry for interrupting, for school districts and states.

A lot of good things have been done here, to be fair and clear.

Rafael: Out of this $54.3 billion budget which was very big, we both agree, how much would you say is politically calculated rather than necessary ?

Steve: As a former state legislator, which you like to remind people I was the, in the mid-1980's, 20 five years old in the legislature, 27, voted out of office.

I was on the finance committee, the budget and finance committee.

One persons fat in the budget is another persons -- hey, that's a really good project for my constituents.

So I will not take on the question of fat and pork because if it's helping someone in their district, their constituents want it.

So what is pork and what is really good policy?

Rafael: So, going back to being unfair -- [LAUGHTER] -- Steve: We are not being unfair.

Rafael: Just kidding.

Going back to questioning what has been happening.

We have this budget at a time when as you correctly say, the fiscal future of New Jersey is clarity best.

Probably negative, if not cloudy.

And we have this tax credit that, it's expensive, may be too much geared to the wealthiest New Jerseyans, maybe not.

And probably will not happen.

And I think the implication is that it is happening because it's an election year.

Steve: Right.

Rafael: You are an expert in the subject of leadership.

Let me ask you, is this good leadership?

Steve: I think it's pragmatic.

Not leadership, but politics.

I think it's pandering.

Not leadership, but politics.

I generally do not believe it's honest.

I respect the Speaker of the house, I respect the governor tremendously, and as president of the Senate, they were all on board with this.

For every Democrat and Republican in the Senate unanimously to vote for this, where they are saying, particularly Republicans, that we can't afford it, you tell me, if you vote for something you think we can't afford but you vote for it because you think procedures will say, "You didn't vote for a tax cut," is that good leadership, or is that pandering to the lowest common denominator to gain some political points?

People can decide for themselves.

Rafael: Speaking of leadership, your new book is "lessons in leadership, 2.0.

The tough stuff."

Any lessons in your new book for the folks in Trenton?

Steve: I have no idea why that book is right behind me.

[LAUGHTER] Here is the message.

There is a chapter in the new book on ownership.

There is a book called "extreme ownership" written by two Navy SEALs.

Here is what it means -- own your mistakes.

Owned them quickly.

On them quickly.

Don't point finger at other people.

To say I was responsible for this, here's what I learn from it and here's what I will do moving forward.

Somehow that has become an impossible thing for most government and political officials.

I think it's the smartest and most appropriate leadership we need.

We need more of it in the White House, the Statehouse and every political office in this country.

Own your actions and stop blaming others.

Rafael: What is the one thing you have learned about leadership since your first book in 2016 they have included in this new book?

Steve: Other than other mistakes I have made?

The biggest thing I have learned, particularly since the pandemic, adapt, never assume the status quo is good enough.

Which is where you and I are doing this interview remotely.

For public broadcasting, we pivoted, we adopted and we evolved.

That never changes.

The status quo will never be the best option when it comes to leadership.

♪ >> "MetroFocus" is made possible by -- The Peter G. Peterson and Joan Ganz Cooney Fund, Filomen M. D'Agostino Foundation, Barbara Hope Zuckerberg, and by Jody and John Arnhold, Bernard and Denise Schwartz, Dr. Robert C. and Tina Sohn Foundation, The Ambrose Monell Foundation, Estate of Roland Karlen.

♪ ♪