{"id":324471,"date":"2026-08-18T23:34:12","date_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:34:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/324471\/"},"modified":"2026-08-18T23:34:12","modified_gmt":"2026-08-18T23:34:12","slug":"new-york-city-lawmaker-emily-gallagher-seemingly-signs-off-on-shoplifting-for-biological-need","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/324471\/","title":{"rendered":"New York City Lawmaker Emily Gallagher Seemingly Signs Off on Shoplifting for \u2018Biological Need\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Emily Gallagher, a state assemblywoman from New York, has seemingly given the green light to shoplifters in need of self-care items.<\/p>\n

Gallagher, along with criminal justice advocates with Court Watch NYC, monitored over 300 arraignments and found that most were “crimes of poverty\u2014people who were stealing things like, you know, soap.”<\/p>\n

The 42-year-old explained, per New York Post<\/a>, during a Thursday, August 13, news conference that, “if you’re stealing those things, you need them.”<\/p>\n

“We are choosing to protect billion-dollar companies, like CVS and Walgreens, over the people who are struggling to get by,” Gallagher added. “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<\/a>.”<\/p>\n

\"<span<\/p>\n

Representatives from the NYPD, including Chief of Detectives Robert Boyce and Commissioner Jessica Tisch, disagree with the politician’s stance.<\/p>\n

“Really, you have to go make those arrests. Otherwise, you’d have chaos on the street,” Boyce said, per ABC7<\/a>. Tisch added, “The mission is to keep you safe, to make you feel safe and to improve your quality of life.”<\/p>\n

According to the NYPD<\/a>, retail theft is down more than 14 percent compared to 2025 under former Mayor Eric Adams<\/a>.<\/p>\n

This story New York City Lawmaker Emily Gallagher Seemingly Signs Off on Shoplifting for ‘Biological Need’<\/a> first appeared on Globe<\/a>. Follow Globe<\/a> on <\/a>Yahoo<\/a> so you don’t miss what’s coming next.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emily Gallagher, a state assemblywoman from New York, has seemingly given the green light to shoplifters in need…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":324472,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[121741,122209,42927,118716,9,24,55,54,4330,56,122208,121743],"class_list":["post-324471","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-biological-need","tag-court-watch-nyc","tag-emily-gallagher","tag-mega-agency","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-new-york-city-headlines","tag-new-york-city-news","tag-new-york-post","tag-ny","tag-robert-boyce","tag-state-assemblywoman"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324471","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=324471"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/324471\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/324472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=324471"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=324471"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=324471"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}