Big Apple residents thought of pickpocketing as a quaint crime from the old days nntil Joe Biden’s migrant wave. But as more illegal aliens cross the southern border and head to New York City, police say that the petty crime is experiencing a resurgence.
The New York Police Department (NYPD) has reported 781 pickpocketing complaints this year. This compares to 650 from this time last year, according to the New York Sun.
The NYPD added that the pickpockets are mostly from South America and that Colombia even has schools that teach how to perpetrate the crime.
“There is a core group of people that do this,” said former police commissioner of New York City, Raymond Kelly. And he said that the group in the Big Apple is “augmented by migrants.”
Unfortunately, it is a crime that the NYPD seems to consider a low priority, mostly because prosecutors and courts rarely send any of the criminals to jail.
Prosecutors don’t bother much with suspects of the crime and are “declining to pursue cases because they know the barrier is high and the burden is on them,” said Hannah Meyers, the director of policing and public safety at the Manhattan Institute.
This has all simply emboldened the pickpockets, who work with abandon, secure in the feeling that they won’t be arrested or prosecuted.
“There are no consequences for virtually anything these days,” Kelly lamented. He added that “Over 50 percent of felonies presented” to New York DA Alvin Bragg “have been downgraded to misdemeanors,” the paper reports.
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Last year, CBS News noted that pickpocketing rates started angling upward in 2021, and each year since has seen several hundred more cases than the previous year.
“We’ve seen more organized crews, where we see actually families of cousins, five, six, doing these picks and dips across the city,” said NYPD Chief of Crime Control Strategies Michael Lipetri.
The Department created a pickpocketing unit in 2022 which operates out of an office in the Midtown subway station.
The Big Apple is not alone in seeing a rise in pickpocketing in the Empire State, though. In February, officials in nearby Westchester County also reported a rise in the crime, ABC7 notes.
The crime is so rampant that websites that cater to travelers warn visitors to the city, “Pickpocketing is quite common in New York City.”
The website Holidify, for instance, advises travelers to buy “anti-theft luggage,” and to place wallets, keys, and other valuables in front pants pockets, not back ones. The site adds that travelers should keep bags and purses buttoned up and not allow things to stick out of folds and compartments.
Experts say the elderly and teens are most vulnerable, but also warn that as a crime of opportunity, pickpockets will target anyone who has allowed their property to escape their attention.
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