New York State Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher, a Democratic Socialists of America member, told a news conference that people who shoplift necessities like soap and toothpaste act out of "biological need", drawing sharp rebukes from city officials and the working-class New Yorkers who bear the cost.
Gallagher stood outside Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday alongside the advocacy group Court Watch NYC and other left-leaning politicians to demand that Mayor Zohran Mamdani end what she called "broken windows policing" by the NYPD. Her central argument: prosecuting people who steal everyday hygiene products from chain drugstores amounts to criminalizing poverty.
The assemblywoman, who represents Greenpoint and other parts of northern Brooklyn, framed shoplifting as a symptom of inequality rather than a criminal act. She did not return a request for comment from The Post.
Court Watch NYC said it monitored 360 arraignments over four days and found more than half involved misdemeanor offenses. Gallagher seized on that figure to push for "treatment-not-jail" punishments for theft, though she offered no specific legislation or formal policy proposal at the event.
Gallagher told the crowd that the real injustice is not the theft itself but the economic conditions behind it:
"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. And that means if you're stealing those things, you need them."
She then turned her aim at the retailers:
"And we are choosing to protect billion-dollar companies, like CVS and Walgreens, over the people who are struggling to get by. So I would say that the true crime is that there is such incredible wealth disparity in this city that there are people who can be thrown in jail simply for having a biological need."
Left unmentioned in Gallagher's remarks: NYPD statistics as of August 9 show retail theft down 14.7 percent and petit larceny down 5.4 percent compared with the same period the prior year. The numbers undercut the premise that the current enforcement approach is failing, and raise the question of why a lawmaker would push to relax penalties for a category of crime that is already declining.
When The Post visited Food Universal supermarket in Co-op City in the Bronx on Saturday, the people who actually live with the consequences of retail theft had a different view.
Jeanette Mack, a 49-year-old academic adviser and single mother, did not hold back:
"Allowing people to shoplift with no consequence is wrong. I'm a single mom and at one time I had four jobs. I would never think of stealing anything."
Mack added that she fears the policy Gallagher wants would push her neighborhood supermarket out of business, the same fate that already befell a nearby Rite Aid.
"They already closed a Rite Aid around here. Now I'm worried that if they put that in place, they are definitely going to close this supermarket, and I would suffer because I'd have to drive to somewhere else instead of walking. And gas price nowadays, that's another thing."
Her worry is not abstract. When stores close in lower-income neighborhoods, residents lose walkable access to food and medicine. The people hurt most are exactly the people Gallagher claims to champion.
Edwin Pichado, the 33-year-old store manager, laid out the math in plain terms:
"Rent is high. You have to pay workers, utilities. Goods going out, but no money coming in. We cannot run a business like that. If they see that you do nothing, they'll keep coming back. They tell their friends, and it becomes a free for all."
Rev. Susan Webb, 68, offered a pointed suggestion for how the city could test Gallagher's theory without destroying private businesses:
"Mamdani can implement that in his stores, so if you don't have the necessities, you can go there and get them for free."
Webb also stated what many of her neighbors clearly feel: "It's foolish to think one should not be punished for stealing. It is a crime."
Gallagher's remarks drew criticism from both sides of the aisle at City Hall. Councilwoman Vickie Paladino, a Queens Republican, posted on X that the assemblywoman's argument is not naïve, it is strategic:
"People like Emily Gallagher try to obfuscate reality because they want to enable this very activity. They know it's devastating to retail stores and that's the point, they're communists and want to use crime to force these stores to close. It's social justice."
Paladino predicted the next step in the cycle: "Soon enough we'll be hearing about the need for government-run drug stores to replace the shops they drove out of business."
Councilwoman Joann Ariola, also a Queens Republican, told The Post that Gallagher's stance reflects a broader ideological pattern among progressive lawmakers who prioritize offenders over the businesses that serve their communities.
"This is the kind of backwards, left-wing lunacy I would expect from someone who values the rights of criminals more than those of business owners."
Ariola added that "policies that Gallagher is pushing are exactly what's driving so many of them away", referring to the retailers who have already shuttered locations across New York City.
Former Queens Councilman Robert Holden, a moderate Democrat, was less diplomatic. He posted on X that Gallagher "is a major dope."
Gallagher won her Assembly seat in 2020 by defeating longtime Democratic incumbent Joe Lentol and was sworn in during January 2021. She is a card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America.
Her record since taking office has drawn repeated scrutiny. She has racked up dozens of traffic and parking tickets despite pushing an anti-car agenda in Albany. In October 2021, she used a GoFundMe campaign to raise money for her cat Roland's emergency surgery. She has also allegedly blocked constituents from posting comments on her social media pages.
In 2024, Gallagher attended an anti-Israel phone bank sponsored by the New Jersey chapter of American Muslims for Palestine, an organization whose leaders have been accused of antisemitic rhetoric and that is under investigation by Virginia's attorney general for potentially funding terrorists.
And during her 2020 campaign, a 2003 online journal she wrote as a student at Ithaca College surfaced. In it, she boasted about exposing herself to a couple and throwing a "homeless party."
None of this background disqualifies a policy argument on its own. But it paints a picture of a lawmaker whose judgment, on personal conduct, on political alliances, and now on basic property rights, consistently falls outside the boundaries most New Yorkers would recognize as reasonable.
Gallagher's argument rests on a premise that sounds compassionate in a press conference but collapses under the weight of its own logic. If stealing soap is a "biological need" that the law should not punish, then every shoplifter in New York City has a ready-made defense. The store manager who watches inventory walk out the door has none.
The assemblywoman named CVS and Walgreens as the villains. But the people who showed up at Food Universal in Co-op City are not billion-dollar corporations. They are a single mother who held four jobs rather than steal, a pastor who believes the law means something, and a store manager trying to keep the lights on with shrinking margins.
Jeanette Mack put it as clearly as anyone could: "They are enabling them instead of helping them. People are going to feel entitled because they know they can walk in and walk out and nothing will happen."
When a lawmaker tells struggling New Yorkers that theft is a right and enforcement is the real crime, the people who pay the price are never the lawmakers. They are the residents who lose their neighborhood pharmacy, then their grocery store, then their options.
