Earlier this month, local business leader Tom Harris picked up eyedrops at a drugstore near his office without needing an employee to retrieve them from behind a locked plexiglass barrier. In that seemingly mundane act, he glimpsed evidence of the turnaround for New York City’s shoplifting epidemic.
Harris, president of the Times Square Alliance, a Manhattan business group with some 2,600 members, said he once fielded several calls a day from retailers about their problems with theft. Now, he said, “I can’t remember the last time a retailer complained to me about out-of-control shoplifting.”
The New York Police Department is making progress on tackling the scourge of retail theft that has hit businesses across the city—and the nation—in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. Retail theft is down a little over 20% in the city for the first quarter of 2026 compared with the same time last year. Last year was also better than the one before, with retail thefts down 14% to 52,682.
To help bring down thefts, the NYPD is deploying officers to subway stations that shoplifters use as escape routes from some of the most targeted retail stores. The department also has been encouraging retailers to report thefts by showing them data that doing so translates to arrests, not inaction.
“I don’t care if it’s $30 worth of merchandise,” said NYPD Chief of Department Michael LiPetri. “Call the NYPD, call 911 and make that complaint report.”
The NYPD is using a data-driven approach that Jessica Tisch has promoted as police commissioner and during her previous turn corralling trash as the city’s Sanitation Department commissioner. The approach has helped the NYPD identify commercial corridors that see an uptick in theft during the holiday season and deploy foot patrols there. The department also keeps tabs on what shoplifters want.
“I can tell you the number one product stolen from CVS,” LiPetri said. He declined to name the item, but NYPD officials say popular targets are candy and health-and-beauty items that are small and easy to conceal.
Nationally, the shoplifting rate fell in 2025 after peaking in 2024, according to analysis by think tank Council on Criminal Justice. The changes were uneven, however: While many smaller cities have seen shoplifting drop to prepandemic levels, some larger cities, including Dallas, Boston and San Francisco, continue to have much higher rates than in 2019. New York City is also still above prepandemic levels.
The postpandemic rise in shoplifting prompted some stores to install facial-recognition surveillance cameras and lock up many of their products behind plexiglass casings—making the act of buying a tube of toothpaste or stick of deodorant a hassle. Some retail chains closed branches in hard-hit areas.
After the pandemic, some New York City retailers stopped reporting shoplifting incidents to police, frustrated that repeat offenders didn’t seem to face meaningful consequences. In 2019, the state ended cash bail for most misdemeanors and nonviolent felonies, meaning many defendants were released to potentially commit another crime. The law since has been adjusted to allow courts to impose bail for repeat retail-theft offenders.
The NYPD has improved the share of complaints that result in arrests to 50% this year from 40% in past years.
The state also passed laws in 2024 to make it easier for police and district attorneys to thwart shoplifters. At the time, some progressive state lawmakers had concerns that tougher penalties wouldn’t reduce crime. But police officials said one helpful tool has been a law allowing investigators to aggregate the thefts of a repeat offender at the same store. If the total value of the stolen goods reaches more than $1,000, the suspect can be charged with a felony grand larceny rather than a misdemeanor.
One repeat offender pleaded guilty to grand larceny in early March after NYPD officers arrested him for shoplifting 14 times in the fall of 2025, mostly at the same Bath & Body Works store in Manhattan’s Flatiron District. Prosecutors were able to charge him with a felony by adding up the value of the thefts.
“We’re not here to arrest people and look for a prosecution on somebody who goes into a store one time down on his or her luck,” LiPetri said.
Nelson Eusebio, director of government affairs at the National Supermarket Association, said his group would like to see shoplifting drop further, especially in the Bronx, which continues to struggle with organized theft rings. Retail-theft complaints in the Bronx were down 5.5% so far this year compared with the same time in 2025, according to the NYPD.
The top stolen product at supermarkets is baby formula, Eusebio said, because it is expensive and can be easily resold. His members have a WhatsApp chat group where they share photos of shoplifters and warn each other when they have been hit.
Some grocery-store owners complain that officers aren’t always interested in taking a complaint because the value of the stolen products is so small, Eusebio said.
“Sometimes it’s like, ‘You guys are bothering us with this?’” he said.
Write to James Fanelli at james.fanelli@wsj.com