Analysis by WorldTribune Staff, April 17, 2023
Those who believe that there is equal justice in the United States and that no one is above the law should take a look at crime statistics out of New York City which were revealed by The New York Times as it bent over backwards to point out that not everyone in the Big Apple is boosting $4,500 Louis Vuitton purses.
The Times reported on Saturday: “Nearly a third of all shoplifting arrests in the city last year involved just 327 people, the police said. Businesses say they have little defense.”
The article went on to say: “Collectively, they were arrested and rearrested more than 6,000 times, Police Commissioner Keechant Sewell said. Some engage in shoplifting as a trade, while others are driven by addiction or mental illness; the police did not identify the 327 people in the analysis.”
“You see? They are just crazy or on drugs. That was the message NYT meant to send,” Don Surber noted in a substack.com op-ed on Monday.
The story, Surber noted, “is you can rob stores dozens of times and get away with it. My question is why don’t more people in NYC just rob stores blind every day? I mean, come on people. If 327 people can get caught 6,000 times and get away with it, what is stopping 8 million people from looting Tiffany’s every morning and Macy’s every afternoon.”
It’s tough to know the real number of New Yorkers who are stealing and how many times they get away with it “because the 327 people were just the ones the police caught. And the 6,000 arrests are just the times the 327 got caught,” Surber noted.
The Times argued that stealing $4,500 Louis Vuitton purses is a crime of necessity, stating in the report: “Criminal justice reform advocates have said that petty thefts are a crime of necessity, and that many down-on-their-luck New Yorkers are stealing what they need to survive in one of the world’s most expensive cities.”
The Times added: “Retailers have pointed to shoplifting as a drag on profits for decades.”
Surber noted: “Once again, the criminal is the victim. How dare the stores make profits! That 327 people apparently are permitted by New York police and prosecutors to rob at will is the real story.”
On June 18, 2020, the New York Times ran a column by Robin D. G. Kelley, a black man with a PhD in history, titled “What Kind of Society Values Property Over Black Lives?
Kelley “argued that looting and ransacking stores is a form or reparations — money for people who were never slaves from people who never owned slaves,” Surber noted.
Kelley wrote: “Our country was built on looting — the looting of Indigenous lands and African labor. African-Americans, in fact, have much more experience being looted than looting. The long history of ‘race riots’ in America — in Cincinnati; Philadelphia; Detroit; New York; Memphis; Wilmington, N.C.; Atlanta; New Orleans; Springfield, Ill.; East St. Louis; Chicago; and Tulsa, Okla. — more closely resembled anti-black pogroms than ghetto rebellions. White mobs, often backed by the police, not only looted and burned black homes and businesses but also maimed and killed black people.”
The NY Times article on the 327 New Yorkers who are above the law was eye-opening, Surber wrote, “because it shows the utopia dreamed by the Family Sulzberger that runs NYT. It is John Lennon’s Imagine all over again. Imagine no possessions! Except Yoko Ono held on to those publishing rights with an iron fist — as anyone should.
“Hypocrisy? NYT securely placed behind its paywall both the shoplifting story and the pro-looting column.”
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Equal justice? 327 New Yorkers were above the law 6,000 times added by Editor Two on
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