SOCIALIST LAWMAKER DEMANDS SHOPLIFTING BE ALLOWED – ‘PEOPLE STEAL FOR BIOLOGICAL NEED’
Emily Gallagher Says Toothpaste Theft Shouldn’t Lead to Arrest—But the Fight Is Really Over How New York Handles Low-Level Crime
For years, New York’s crime debate has carried a tension that neither side has fully resolved.
Low-level theft is still theft. Stores absorb losses, employees deal with repeat offenders, and neighborhoods can lose convenient retail options when businesses decide conditions are no longer worth the cost.
At the same time, an arrest for a minor offense can pull a poor or unstable person deeper into the criminal justice system even when the underlying conduct involves a few dollars’ worth of basic necessities.
New York Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher put that tension into unusually blunt language last week.
Speaking outside Manhattan Criminal Court with Court Watch NYC and other criminal-justice advocates, the Brooklyn Democrat described many of the cases the group had observed as “crimes of poverty.”
“Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty—people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap,” Gallagher said.
Then came the phrase that drove the backlash.
“And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them,” she said, before arguing that people can be jailed “simply for having a biological need.”
The wording was provocative enough that critics quickly summarized her position as defending shoplifting itself.
But the actual policy argument is narrower.
Gallagher did not claim that taking merchandise without paying is legal. After the news conference, she made her preferred consequence clearer: “No one should be arrested—much less jailed—for stealing a tube of toothpaste.”
That distinction matters because the argument now unfolding in New York is not really over whether petit larceny remains a crime.
It is over when police should make a custodial arrest for a low-level offense, when an appearance ticket or summons is enough, and when treatment, diversion, social services, or some other response should replace detention.
The event that produced Gallagher’s remarks was itself designed to make that case.
Court Watch NYC and allied groups said volunteers observed 360 arraignments beginning August 10 over four days.
According to the advocates’ tally, 57 percent involved misdemeanor charges.
They also said 130 involved low-level accusations for which police could have issued a ticket instead of making an arrest, while only 83 involved felony charges that would not qualify for a desk appearance ticket.
The groups reported another disparity: 93 percent of the people they watched brought into court were people of color, and 57 percent were Black.
Those figures help explain why the advocates describe the issue as more than a debate about shoplifting.
They see custodial arrests for quality-of-life offenses as part of a broader “broken windows” system that they argue disproportionately burdens poor and minority New Yorkers.
But the numbers also need to be read for what they are.
The 360 cases were an observational sample assembled by advocacy groups over four days. They were not presented as a randomized survey of every arrest or arraignment in New York City.
That makes the findings useful as a snapshot of what the volunteers saw, but not enough by themselves to establish how representative those four days were of the entire city’s criminal-court system.
The activists’ larger target is Mayor Zohran Mamdani.
They argue that the NYPD is still making too many arrests for conduct that Mamdani, during his campaign, promised to address with less punitive approaches to poverty, homelessness, mental illness, substance use, and other quality-of-life problems.
Gallagher and the other advocates are asking his administration to move further away from what they call broken-windows policing.
Mamdani, however, has publicly backed Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and said he is confident she is carrying out his public-safety vision.
That leaves the administration in the same balancing act the city has faced for years.
Progressive advocates want fewer people taken through central booking for low-level conduct.
Police officials and critics of that approach warn that repeat theft, vandalism, fare evasion, and persistent disorder can become more difficult to control when offenders believe there will be little immediate consequence.
Neither side gets to settle that debate simply by pointing to one toothpaste case.
New York law still treats petit larceny as a Class A misdemeanor.
But an arrest, a conviction, and a jail sentence are three different stages of the process.
Low-level misdemeanor cases can be handled through desk appearance tickets and other non-custodial procedures, depending on the offense and circumstances. That means describing the choice as either “jail the shoplifter” or “legalize theft” misses much of the actual policy space between those positions.
Gallagher’s critics are strongest when they focus on deterrence and the cumulative effect of repeated losses.
A tube of toothpaste may have little value by itself. Hundreds of thefts across a store, or repeat theft by the same individuals, are a different operational problem.
Retailers have spent heavily on security, locked merchandise, employees, investigations, and loss prevention. Customers also pay a price when shopping becomes less convenient or a store reduces hours, changes inventory, or closes.
Those concerns are real.
But some of the broader claims attached to Gallagher’s remarks go further than the available evidence.
The argument that New York’s recent retail environment proves progressive policies have eliminated consequences for theft is difficult to square with the city’s own current crime numbers.
NYPD data showed retail theft down 15.3 percent during the first seven months of 2026 compared with the same period in 2025.
By the CompStat period ending August 16, retail theft remained down about 14 percent year to date, while petit larceny was down about 5 percent.
The NYPD has credited that retail-theft decline to a focused enforcement strategy: identifying patterns, deploying officers to high-theft locations, and conducting sustained investigations rather than relying only on one-off enforcement.
That does not prove Gallagher’s preferred approach is correct.
It does show that the current picture is more complicated than a simple story in which enforcement disappeared and theft therefore surged.
The question is what kind of enforcement produces the best result.
For critics such as Queens Councilwoman Vickie Paladino and Councilwoman Joann Ariola, the danger is the signal sent when an elected official says someone should not be arrested for stealing a basic item.
They argue that even sympathetic cases can establish a norm that becomes difficult to contain once repeated offenders or organized thieves realize police intervention is less likely.
Former Councilman Robert Holden, a Democrat, also attacked Gallagher personally, while shoppers and a supermarket manager interviewed by the New York Post argued that theft imposes real costs on people who follow the rules and on businesses operating on thin margins.
Those reactions illustrate why Gallagher’s language created such a political problem.
Her phrase “biological need” centers the hardship of the person accused of stealing.
Retailers and their customers hear the same phrase and ask who is supposed to absorb the loss.
That is the gap neither side can talk away.
There is also a difference between explaining why a crime happens and excusing it.
Poverty can be a motive for some theft without being a legal defense to theft.
Likewise, recognizing that detention can destabilize employment, housing, treatment, or family life does not require pretending that stores have no legitimate interest in protecting merchandise.
A workable policy has to hold both ideas at once.
Gallagher’s broader criminal-justice record fits the first side of that equation.
She has supported expanding treatment-oriented alternatives and has joined advocates arguing that incarceration can worsen the problems that drive some low-level offending.
Her critics emphasize the other side: a system still needs escalating consequences for repeat conduct, particularly when the same stores or neighborhoods are repeatedly targeted.
The harder question is where that line should be drawn.
Should a person accused of stealing a low-cost necessity for the first time be taken into custody, or issued an appearance ticket?
Should the answer change for someone with a pattern of repeated theft?
Should diversion depend on the value of the merchandise, the defendant’s record, evidence of addiction or mental illness, or whether the theft appears organized rather than need-driven?
Those are operational questions, not slogans.
They are also more useful than the claim that Gallagher simply wants shoplifting to be legal—or the opposite claim that every low-level theft requires a custodial arrest.
The Court Watch findings have put one part of New York’s arrest system under a microscope.
The NYPD’s falling retail-theft numbers put another fact on the table: the city is currently reducing reported retail theft while still using targeted enforcement.
The Mamdani administration now has to decide whether it can preserve that progress while reducing the number of people brought through custody for low-level offenses.
Gallagher has already made clear which direction she wants the city to move.
Her critics have made equally clear what they fear could happen if it moves too far.
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What the “biological need” controversy settled is that the political divide over low-level crime is still very much alive.
What it did not settle is the question that matters more to New Yorkers than the phrase itself: which offenses require arrest, which can be handled without detention, and how the city can distinguish poverty-driven misconduct from persistent or organized theft without making either public safety or proportionality an afterthought.
