The crime crisis caused by lefty policies has now officially entered the theater of the absurd. 

Witness a CVS store in our nation’s capital, forced by rampant, serial theft to pull toilet paper and paper towels from the shelves, replacing them with framed photos of the missing products and a buzzer.

Customers trying to buy Charmin or Bounty must now buzz to summon a clerk, who will (eventually) retrieve the precious commodity from a back room. 

In other words, the capital of the most powerful nation in human history has now been reduced to third-world-style security systems to sell basic goods. 

Small wonder Mayor Muriel Bowser has unveiled a new package of laws meant to undo the damage from disastrous pro-crime policies voted in by the DC City Council (policies she once backed).

These were so bad they inspired a bipartisan congressional slapdown in 2022 — one President Biden vetoed (though he did this year sign a law blocking another, even worse “reform”).

So the framed photos would be comical, if they weren’t so tragic.

They reveal a clear glimpse of the grievous social harms these policies inevitably do. 

And of where New York City is headed. 

Remember, per recent national data, the Big Apple took the lead in retail crime jumps over recent years. 

Gotham’s seen a 64% increase in reported retail theft compared to mid-2019, beating out Los Angeles’ grim 61%.

And overall petty larceny incidents are up almost 30% over 2021 in New York — in the official stats, though many retailers have surely given up on bothering to report the endless thefts. 

Many chain retailers are already locking up toothpaste, etc.; it’s only a matter of time before they resort to the DC CVS’s approach to toilet paper. 

Especially since the cadres of the hard left in our own City Council and in Albany are dead set on keeping their disastrous criminal justice “reforms” fully in place. 

Things won’t turn around unless and until enough legislators, city or state, who back those “reforms” start paying a severe political price.