New York City bodega and grocery store owners are arming
themselves with guns to protect themselves from violent criminals stealing
from their businesses.
the United Bodegas in America of America and Small Business
group says they have helped at least
230 store owners apply for gun licenses over the past
year.
Founder of the Bodega and Small Business Association Frank Marte
joins me now.
Frank, good morning to you.
This is a huge problem and
25% of Bodega and grocery store owners are armed as
opposed to 10%
pre COVID. It is clear that these owners do not
feel safe.
What is your message this morning?
Well we are not safe and we are.
We don't have the the protection that we need.
We understand that the Police Department they sure now
they cannot be assisting or when we be having so
much problems.
So we need to protect,
we need more, more support from the NYPD.
But since we are not getting that,
we even be have to We've been getting armed ourselves.
We have to protect our storm ourselves because we don't
have
other other auction to do.
Yeah, if you're getting a gun to protect yourself at
work,
it is clear that the city is failing to protect
its citizens.
That's its number one job.
So who do you blame here?
Well, right now we we are playing the electoral officials
they are not working on together with the NYPD.
They should come together. All of the electoral official,
the mayors and the NYPD working together with the community,
with the business owner community,
the community itself. Resolve this problem to bring back the
public safety that we really lost.
Yeah, without question. And the city would be nowhere without
its grocery store and bodega owners.
You guys are our lifeline.
I was reading earlier this morning about 1 owner in
Queens who said that a thief cut a hole in
the seal the roof of his business and then stole
$3000 worth of items, destroyed his whole store.
What are some stories that bodega owners are telling you
about the crimes they've experienced
They've been having a lot of problems,
even myself sometime
like 3 weeks ago I had to call the
911 myself for three store that they called me that
they was having problems and they called the police and
they was passing over half an hours and nobody respond.
And I called myself and I said,
listen, my name Francisco Martin and we need to prevent
another tragedy to happen in the store.
Please, we need the, the response of the NYPD
quick to the store and we'll be having a lot
of robbing in the store,
especially in the bronze everywhere and the five borders.
We'll be having a lot of a lot of problems
shortlifting,
supermarkets, bodegas. We are losing so much money
shortlifting and we don't have the support that we need
and we pay for that.
We pay taxes to have the,
the, the, the protection of the of the city,
city support and the state support to offer
the, the, the protection to the to the community
and the store owners. And we are now
facing that kind of problems.
We've been trying to meet with the commissioner of
NYPD to work together to see how we can,
how we can, what strategy we can use to prevent
this to keep happening and increasing.
And you have to prevent this sort of crime from
taking place.
Well, criminals are now being put on notice that bodega
owners are armed.
So hopefully that can be another element to prevent future
crimes from happening.
Frank, thank you so much for joining us this morning
with this important message in your story.
We appreciate it.