The migrants who jumped two of the city’s Finest last weekend in Times Square were part of a wolfpack of violent shoplifters who just moments before had snatched handbags in a nearby store and attacked an employee who tried to stop them, the manager told The Post.
“They always come in and take the handbags then they run,” the manager, who asked for anonymity, said of the migrants who hang out in front of the Candler Building shelter on West 42nd Street near Seventh Avenue.
“They do it all the time. It’s just ridiculous.”
She said five or six of the men came into Aldo on Jan. 27 at around 8:30 p.m., swiping handbags that go for as much as $85 each off a table.
She called the cops as one fought the cashier.
“When I came upstairs, she was tussling, trying to get the bag back,” the manager said.
“She got one bag back and the other guys took like two or three other bags.”
When the cops arrived, they recorded the store security video capturing the thieves in action.
“The cop said ‘Alright, I’m gonna look outside to see if I see one of them and if I do, I’m gonna make an arrest,’” she recalled.
“As soon as he was walking outside, everyone just started running. And those Spanish dudes jumped the police officer right there. It was insane.”
That’s when she shut down the store and told the customers to stay put.
“I was standing right there in front of the window,” she said of the now-viral beatdown.
“I was like, ‘Oh my God, look, look, look.’ l couldn’t believe what my eyes just saw.”
She said the same group of guys hang around outside her store everyday.
The same group steals from a nearby Lids store “sometimes multiple times a day,” the manager there said.
“The migrants are going crazy out here,” Harriel Brathwaite Jr. told The Post.
“They act like they’re shopping and they’ll put it in their little bag, they’ll put in with their baby in the strollers,” the 36-year-old said.
“They’ll walk in the door and just scoop a couple of hats and run.”
Times Square has become ground zero of migrant violence and criminal activity. Several local hotels and shelters house thousands of new arrivals — but many of the city’s 165,000 migrants also travel to the Crossroads of the World every day from other corners of the city.
“Why would you stay at a shelter at Floyd Bennett if you can come to Times Square,” a high-ranking law enforcement source said of the tent shelter in the far reaches of Brooklyn.
“It’s only going to get worse when the weather gets better.”
The seven men arrested so far in the Saturday beatdown of the cop and NYPD lieutenant were from shelters in other boroughs, according to the NYPD. Police are seeking six more suspects.
Of those arrested, four — Darwin Andres Gomez, 19, Kelvin Servita Arocha, 19, Wilson Juarez, 21, and Yorman Reveron, 24 — have reportedly left for California after making up a story and securing bus fare from a church group, a police official said.
Also arrested were Jhoan Boada, 22, Yohenry Brito, 24, and Jandry Barros, 21, cops said. All were listed by police as either homeless or living at migrant shelters.
Authorities are now looking into whether the beatdown suspects are connected to five citywide grand larceny and robbery trends, law enforcement sources told The Post — and whether any of the Times Square perps are linked to a Venezuelan gang known as Tren de Aragua, which has been described by Interpol as that country’s “most powerful homegrown criminal actor.”
Tren de Aragua started in the Tocorón prison in the state of Aragua, according to InSight Crime, an online crime website. The group’s name, which roughly translates to the Aragua Train, may have originated from a labor union working on a railway project through the state that was never finished, according to the site.
Tren de Aragua is also considered the only Venezuelan gang that “has successfully projected its power abroad,” Interpol noted.
One 19-year-old Times Square suspect, whom ex-NYPD official John Miller said on CNN once faced 10 charges in a day, may also be linked to the gang, Miller said.
“So what the detectives are telling me is they have crews here that operate in New York, do all their stealing, then go to Florida to spend the money, and then come back. And I’m, like, ‘Well, why don’t they just stay and steal in Florida?” Miller said. “[The detectives] said, ‘Because there you go to jail.’”
The migrants are a “huge headache,” said a security guard outside the nearby theater where the Broadway musical Aladdin plays.
“There are about 30 of them out there [at the 41st Street entrance] at all times,” the guard said of the Candler Building’s rear entrance, noting the men hang out with their bikes.
The cops sometimes chase them away, he said, but it’s a temporary solution.
“They just keep coming back and no one knows what to do about it,” he said. “We’ve seen fights. They’re always out here, smoking, drinking.”
Migrants have also allegedly been creating havoc on the subways, with four arrested this week for pickpocketing straphangers, including one woman who was collared eight times in the six months since arriving in New York, sources told The Post.
Crime has shot up in the Midtown South Precinct since the shelter near Seventh Avenue opened, along with the nearby Row Hotel on Eighth Avenue, another high-ranking NYPD source said.
Overall, grand larcenies shot up 20% in the precinct, which covers Times Square, Grand Central Terminal, and Penn Station, so far this year compared to the same period in 2023, and 83% since 2022, public data show.
Petty larceny has jumped 69% since 2022 in the busy precinct, the data shows.
“The quality of life in Times Square has gone in the toilet, especially right in front of the migrant center on 42nd,” the police source said.
“Basically, it got so bad with them harassing tourists and pickpocketing them that the grand larcenies have shot up like 125% since these migrant shelters opened.
“Tourists, large crowds and a lot of businesses create an environment of easy prey,” the source said. “Pickpockets, larcenies, unattended property, store theft. Times Square is a place that never sleeps.”