Former judge George Grasso, a Queens district attorney Democratic primary challenger, blasted DA Melinda Katz’s efforts to curb retail theft as “too little, too late.”
“As far as I can see, for the first three years of her tenure, it was basically ignored as an issue,” the ex-NYPD deputy commissioner said of the incumbent DA outside City Hall Friday.
“The best language I could use right now is: too little, too late,” he declared.
He pledged if he’s elected, “I will reestablish quality of life enforcement and I will do the equivalent of town hall meetings.”
“I’ll divide Queens up into quadrants and I will involve precinct commanders. I will involve the appropriate Queens federal commanders,” he asserted.
“We’re gonna bring in merchants. We’re gonna bring in the business sector. We’re gonna bring in the clergy and we will make it very clear that across the board [that] retail theft is a high priority.”
The NYPD recorded 13,738 reported retail crimes between the first three months of this year ending in March, a slight dip of 7% from the 14,790 crimes tracked during the same time period last year.
But in the borough of Queens, there was a 4.3% total uptick between January and March compared to the year prior.
“I will have a unit in place in the district attorney’s office to make sure that we identify recidivists —- the police department as a specific list of theft recidivists. We will identify them, we will prosecute them to the fullest extent of the law,” he promised.
Mayor Eric Adams unveiled a plan Wednesday to combat a rise in shoplifting, pledging to require the NYPD to keep a list of the city’s top repeat offenders and kickstart early intervention programs for first-time thieves.
Katz – who backed the plan alongside Adams earlier this week – noted she’s also focused on getting help for suspects struggling with mental illness.
“They’re terrible things for our children to see and to have an administration and law enforcement on both sides, law enforcement and police and DAs that are working together with the mayor of the City of New York on training the individuals that work in the store on mental health illness, on making sure people aren’t hungry, on finding out why people are doing this every single day,” she said at the time.
Meanwhile, Adams and other law enforcement officials admitted they need help from Albany lawmakers to tighten state law involving recidivists.
“While my office continues to partner with the NYPD, as we have for three years, to do the hard work of bringing retail theft down and hold people accountable through an initiative touted for its success, my opponent continues to pander to his MAGA Trump supporters and demonstrate just how uninformed he is,” Katz said in a statement Friday.
“My opponent can keep up with his antics; I’m going to keep doing my job.”