A day of peaceful protests in Manhattan gave way to a night of looting Sunday, as windows were smashed and shelves emptied at dozens of stores from Soho to Midtown.
Mayor Bill de Blasio on Monday blamed the looting on a “small number of violent protesters.” He said future attempts at looting will be addressed “very, very aggressively.”
“That is not something we typically see in the city,” de Blasio said. “That is unacceptable in New York City. That will not be allowed in New York City.”
Among the shops picked clean were Apple, Louis Vuitton, and Coach stores. A group of around a dozen people broke into a Chanel store in Soho and made off with expensive handbags, the Post reports.
Police said they arrested around 250 people Sunday night, down from 340 on Saturday. Some were arrested outside of shops in Soho, where looters emptied bags from city trash cans and filled them with products from high-end stores, Bedford and Bowery reports. Bloomingdale’s, Chanel, Rolex, and Diesel stores were looted.
In Union Square, looters hit Walgreens and GameStop.
More than a dozen bikes were snatched from a shop on Bowery.
And countless fleeces from North Face.
NBC New York reporter Myles N. Miller noted an “elaborate scheme” in which looters coordinated with people in cars and on electric scooters.
In several instances, protesters tried to stop looters from entering stores.
By Monday morning, the extent of the damage in Soho became clear as people woke up to streets strewn with glass, garbage, and boxes from high-end retailers.
