I pointed out recently that San Francisco police had arrested a group of teens for a string of thefts at various SF Walgreens stores. One of the shoplifters wasn't even a teen, he was 12 but had apparently been involved in numerous thefts and at least one assault of a store employee.

Today the NY Times has a story that looks at another common type of shoplifter that has been making news for the past couple years. David Andino is a drug addict and for the past several years he has been stealing from retail stores in New York to feed his daily habit.

In the prime of his shoplifting, Andino was stealing every morning and many evenings. He had a regular buyer on West 116th Street, he said, who resold his stolen items to customers.

They loved the smell-goods, the cosmetics, the makeup. Clothes, detergents, Downy Unstopables. Fifty of those would bring him $15. Seconds of work. He could sound like a stock boy as he described the store. Peppermint soaps. Collagen — he could sell all the collagen he could carry.

He had many other paying customers, too. Families. They wanted Ninja blenders, espresso machines, air fryers. The whole neighborhood knew him. “I’m having a big barbecue,” someone would tell him.

He’d go to a Trader Joe’s on Broadway and West 72nd Street and steal food — 20 or 40 steaks in about the time it takes to read this sentence. The store’s perpetually long line, winding through the aisles, made his work easier. “They’re all covering me,” he realized. He grabbed sockeye salmon, lamb chops, racks of ribs. He stole bacon to sell to the breakfast carts in Harlem.

Andino's mother is a retired NYPD officer. She was worried about the possibility he could become an addict because his father had become one and died after using an infected needle. She became worried enough when he was in school that she took out a mortgage to send him to a military academy. That seemed to work and he enrolled in college. But at college he started selling Oxy pills to his fellow students and eventually tried one himself. He quickly became addicted and after dropping out of school switched to heroin because it was cheaper. When his mother found out about his habit, she kicked him out of the house, in part because he'd been stealing from her.

He started out begging for money on the subway but later a friend showed him how easy it was to steal from retail stores. Andino started doing this every day to feed his habit. Over time he settled into a pattern. Instead of going to various stores he exclusively would steal from one Target store in Tribeca. He would go every day.

Target employees found him stealing, and he would apologize — “I’m sorry I’m doing this, I’m sorry” — even as he kept loading his bag. Andino learned quickly that guards weren’t allowed to physically stop him. It was against store policy.

The security guards began to recognize him. “You got a minute and a half,” one guard told him one day, as if daring him.

Sometimes Andino spoke back. “You do what you do, and I’ll do what I do, and we’ll see what happens,” he’d say. “It’s not like it’s your stuff. I’m not going to your house and stealing from you.”

At some point, Andino and people just like him were having an impact on the store's bottom line. Some stores were shutting down locations and those that remained open began putting their merchandise behind plastic shelving to prevent shoplifting. 

Andino's Target got a new manager who made arresting him a goal. By keeping track of what he stole until it added up to $1,000, police would be able to charge him with a felony instead of another misdemeanor he could ignore. On the day he crossed that line, police were waiting inside the store for him.

Andino, who is now 35, gave an interview to the Times about his career as a thief. He said the only way to stop people like him was to get them off of drugs. But his own efforts to do that don't sound very solid.

“I want to go into a program,” he said. “But I’m not going to lie. I’m going to go into Harlem,” to find his girlfriend, he said. “I’m going to have one last hurrah. And I’m out.”

Would he steal during that last visit?

“If I have to,” he said.

So long as we let addicts choose to live this way, we will have a small army of retail thieves looking to feed their habits and stores full of merchandise locked up behind plastic.