After sharp spike in shoplifting arrests, city councilor calls for more enforcement

Local News

In 2025, shoplifting arrests in Boston rose by 261% compared to the five-year average.

This year, law enforcement officials in Boston put a greater emphasis on retail theft enforcement, leading to a dramatic increase in the number of shoplifting arrests. But as officials tout those year-end statistics, a City Council member is publicly calling for the police to step up enforcement efforts even more.

In 2025, shoplifting arrests were up 261% compared to the five-year average, officials said at a community meeting focused entirely on retail theft that was held at the beginning of December.  There was a 113% increase in overall retail theft arrests this year compared to last, Boston Police Commissioner Michael Cox said at a press conference last week. 

Councilor Ed Flynn, who has been continuously sounding the alarm about retail theft this year, cited some of these statistics in a letter he sent to Cox on Monday. He asked that more resources be dedicated to combating retail theft and advocated for stricter policies for offenders. 

“I am respectfully requesting increased efforts on enforcement operations to target repeat, high volume, and violent shoplifters. In my view, we are largely at this point because of failed policies that did not take a zero tolerance approach to shoplifting,” Flynn wrote. 

He elaborated on the differences between retail theft as a whole and shoplifting, which is theft of items valued at less than $1,200. This threshold, the difference between being charged with a misdemeanor rather than a felony, was raised from $250 to $1,200 in 2018. Shoplifting arrests in particular rose 116% in 2025 compared to last year, he said. 

Flynn said that the lightening of shoplifting penalties has “encouraged repeat offenders and sophisticated criminals.” He also called attention to policy changes the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office enacted under previous leadership in 2019, where prosecutors were directed not to prosecute certain nonviolent crimes like shoplifting. 

Current Suffolk District Attorney Kevin Hayden has advocated for a case-by-case basis instead of a blanket policy, and is focusing on repeat and violent offenders. The policy mentioned by Flynn is no longer in effect, James Borghesani, chief of communications for Hayden’s office, said Tuesday.

Boston Mayor Michelle Wu’s office did not return a request for comment. 

“It appears that Councilor Flynn is supportive of the efforts that the Boston Police and our partners in the retail community and at the Suffolk County District Attorney’s Office have made in the past 21 months working together to address this issue,” Mariellen Burns, chief of communications for the Boston Police Department, said in response to Flynn’s letter when contacted by Boston.com. 

Last year, the Wu administration teamed up with Hayden’s office and retailers to launch a new “Safe Shopping Initiative” to target retail theft specifically. The program uses data and reports from businesses to identify trends, coordinate prevention strategies, and ideally decrease store closures. 

It was expanded this year, leading to more reporting and more arrests, Cox has said. Officials are also focusing more on organized retail theft and repeat offenders. These repeat offenders make up 20% of people arrested for shoplifting. 

“The enhanced enforcement operations and subsequent prosecution actions—including accountability for violent and repeat offenders combined with structured services for qualifying lower-level defendants—are designed to target the root behaviors that lead to shoplifting and to reduce retail-based crime,” Borghesani said of the initiative.

A seemingly organized group of shoplifters struck Lululemon in Boston multiple times this fall. Officials say they are now coordinating better with retailers to address theft. 

“We also want to preserve the ability for businesses to grow and continue to provide brick and mortar shopping options for our residents across Boston. Working closely with retailers to increase detailed reporting has been vital in allowing us to utilize our resources in the most effective ways,” Burns said. 

The increased focus on retail theft comes as Boston leaders grapple with ongoing public safety concerns downtown and in other key areas, like South Boston. Some residents and business owners have blamed the Wu administration for its handling of Mass. and Cass, saying that enforcement there caused retail theft, congregate drug use, and other crimes to spread to new areas of the city. Leaders convened a major summit to address downtown crime in October. 

The Wu administration says it increased BPD patrols downtown by 31% this year, leading to an overall violent crime decline of 24% in the area. Quality of life calls concerning downtown declined by 36%. 

At Mass. and Cass, total violent crime decreased by 8% and property crime decreased by 10% in 2025 compared to 2024, according to the administration.