Mayor Eric Adams is calling on New York shoppers to remove their face masks when entering stores to crack down on shoplifters.
“Don’t let people enter the store without taking off their face masks and then once inside they can continue to wear them if they wish,” Adams said on 1010-WINS about facial recognition. to help especially. fight repeat offenders.
“When you see these people wearing a mask, it’s often not about being afraid of the pandemic. It’s afraid the police will catch [them] for their deeds,” he said.
Adams’ call for the retail outlet’s unmasking of the entrance comes days after data released by the New York City Police Department revealed a unexplained decrease of 10% in retail theft reports in February compared to last year.
Officials could not confirm whether NYPD officers made more shoplifting arrests – but the decrease comes amid a unprecedented peak complaints of shoplifting in recent years.
According to Adams, his new no-mask-on-entry proposal would allow officials to use technology to identify shoplifters after the fact and “those who commit serious crimes.”
Buyers who wish to remain masked for health reasons will be able to put their mask back on after lowering it when entering the store, the mayor added.
Asked what the NYPD is doing to help businesses tasked with ensuring customers remove their masks upon entry, Adams said additional officers have been ordered to patrol sales areas by retail.
“We are strengthening our coverage in these BIDs [Business Improvement District] areas, these high trading areas, and we’re also strengthening our monitoring and our practices,” Adams said.
“So we did something called ‘paid retail,’ where you have uniformed officers allowed on their off hours to do some of the security in many of our stores and locations and that has always been a hit,” a- he said, adding that he remembered the practice used in high-end stores when he was a police officer.
Last week, NYPD Department Chief Jeff Maddrey shared Adams’ sentiment and urged business owners to force buyers to remove their masks for identification as a “condition of entry”.
“We need our businesses to be proactive and do their due diligence,” the chief said, adding, “We need to make sure people identify themselves.”
Big Apple merchants have become so desperate to catch sticky-fingered thieves amid the recent spike in thefts that many have taken matters into their own hands.
In the Bronx, a group of Vigilant private security guards was employed to keep the Fordham Road business improvement district crime-free by acting as a deterrent against shoplifters.
Likewise, the 34th Street Partnership — the business group serving Macy’s Herald Square, Penn Station and Madison Square Garden — has turned to K-9 units to “sniff out” crime.
Adam’s big proposition for local businesses comes after gunman wearing hazmat suit shot and killed a deli worker on the Upper East Side during a macabre flight on Saturday. The shooter is believed to have been responsible for three brutal robberies in the past 10 days.