NYC Target Store To Close, Company Says Retail Theft To Blame

NEW YORK CITY — East Harlem's Target is one of nine chain stores nationwide the retail giant announced Tuesday it will close because of theft and crime.

The Target on East 117th St. near Pleasant Avenue will close on Oct. 21, the company said in a statement.

"Theft and organized retail crime are threatening the safety of our team and guests," Target said in a statement.

"We know that our stores serve an important role in their communities, but we can only be successful if the working and shopping environment is safe for all."

The East Harlem store, opened in 2010, is among about a dozen outposts in Manhattan and 96 in the New York City market which employ more than 20,000 people, the company said.

The other stores that are closing are located in Seattle, Portland, and the San Francisco area.

Before making the "difficult decision," Target officials said they invested heavily in strategies to prevent and stop theft and organized retail crime in our stores, such as:

• Adding more security team members
• Using third-party guard services
• Implementing theft-deterrent tools across our business

"Despite our efforts, unfortunately, we continue to face fundamental challenges to operating these stores safely and successfully," the company said.

Target said it remains committed to serving customers in its over 150 other locations and will partner with the U.S. Department of Homeland Security to combat retail theft.

The store closing comes as Target plans a new location - also located in East Harlem - on West 125th Street near Lenox Avenue.

In East Harlem, petit larceny is down 2.5 percent compared with this time last year. Citywide, petit larceny is down 4 percent.

The National Retail Federation’s 2023 National Retail Security Survey, released Tuesday, found 88 percent of retailers report that shoplifters are more aggressive and violent compared with one year ago.

Companies that track the number of violent shoplifting incidents reported they saw the number of violent shoplifting events increase by over one third on average year-over-year.

Mass violence/active assailant events and organized retail crime increased this year, though other kinds of thefts like employee theft, loyalty program fraud and guest-on-associate violence decreased, the report said.

While companies are growing concerned about violence related to store thefts, the losses themselves aren’t increasing as much, according to the report. The average shrink rate - that is, retail losses calculated by a business - in FY 2022 was 1.6 percent, or $112.1 billion in losses, up from 1.4 percent in FY 2021.

This fiscal year saw the same average shrink rates as 2020 and 2019; before that, average shrink rates hovered around 1.3 to 1.4 percent from 2016 to 2019.