Two people walked into the Marshalls on East 14th Street in Brooklyn earlier this month, loaded up on merchandise, and walked out without paying a dime, according to investigators. Police say the pair made off with $1,559 worth of items before fleeing on foot, and now they're asking the public for help putting names to the faces.
According to News 12 Brooklyn, investigators say the theft happened on Oct. 10 at the East 14th Street store. The two individuals entered the location, took the merchandise without paying, and then fled on foot, per the outlet's reporting. Police have since released images of the two individuals in hopes that someone recognizes them.
Anyone with information is urged to call 1-800-577-TIPS, the tip line police provided to the station. No further details about the suspects' descriptions or the specific items taken have been made public.
A Citywide Pattern of Retail Losses
This Marshalls case is just the latest in a string of brazen retail thefts logged across the city this month. Earlier in October, Hoodline previously reported that NYPD was searching for three suspects accused of stealing $1,800 in merchandise from a Home Depot on Nostrand Avenue in Bed-Stuy. And in a case with a dramatic ending, a Brooklyn man accused of stealing nearly $2,200 in merchandise from a Paramus Marshalls was arrested after fleeing across Route 17 and into a brook, according to the same News 12 Brooklyn report on that pursuit.
The numbers behind these incidents paint a complicated picture. Petit-larceny incidents at major commercial retailers rose 53% between 2019 and 2022, with drug stores and chain stores seeing some of the most dramatic increases, according to the John Jay College Research and Evaluation Center. That same research found thefts involving items valued under $1,000 have climbed 50% since 2006 and 29% since 2019 citywide.
Repeat Offenders and a Mixed Trend Line
City officials have pointed to a 44% jump in retail theft over the previous five years, as reported by Retail Dive. The outlet also noted that in 2022, New York police made more than 22,000 retail theft arrests, and just 327 repeat offenders accounted for nearly a third of them — a detail that has shaped how the city approaches enforcement.
Not every data point tells the same story, though. One analysis found shoplifting in New York City rose 63% in its comparison, even as the trend declined nationwide outside the five boroughs, according to ABC7 New York. A Nov. 30, 2023, report from that same outlet said the NYPD reported shoplifting was down about 7% so far in 2023, suggesting the situation may have been improving even as individual cases like the East 14th Street Marshalls theft kept surfacing. For now, it remains unclear whether the two people sought in this latest case have been identified.
