By Gus Saltonstall
A trio of Upper West Side businesses were damaged or burglarized on Thursday morning by two men wearing ski masks, police said.
The first incident took place at El Gallo Taqueria at 502 Amsterdam Avenue, between West 84th and 85th streets, around 6:20 a.m., when the two men broke into the business using a large rock, a police spokesperson told West Side Rag. The duo removed several items, but it is unclear specifically what they took as of 11 a.m. on Thursday.
Shortly after, the men again used a large rock to try to break into both Hummus Place and Frame Coffee at 305 Amsterdam Avenue, between West 74th and 75th streets, according to police and employees.
A window at the front entrance of Hummus Place was broken, but the burglars were unable to get into the restaurant, an employee who was cleaning up the broken glass on Thursday morning told West Side Rag.
The ski-mask-wearing burglars were able to get into Frame Coffee, though, after breaking the window above the front door. The duo proceeded to snag the cash register from behind the counter, toss it into a backpack, and flee the popular coffee shop, police and a manager at Frame Coffee told the Rag on Thursday morning.
However, the duo couldn’t get the register to open, and were also spotted running out of the shop, the manager told the Rag. The pair ended up getting a block away, but then doubled back and dumped the backpack with the cash register in front of Frame Coffee, the manager said, and police confirmed.
“We are open and we are fixing the door,” the manager told West Side Rag. “Maybe it was panic,” he added talking about the duo’s choice to abandon the register.
The two suspects were wearing all black and ski masks, NYPD said.
The investigation remains ongoing, and there have been no arrests.
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Here comes, “Nothing to see here. . . .crime is down. . ..nothing to see here”.
Sounds like three broken windows and one displaced cash register
What is the point of your comment? Do you think “crime is down” means there’s never any crime ever?
About 230,000 people live on the Upper West Side. About 8.5 million people live in NYC. There’s crime every single day. That doesn’t mean the amount of crime on the UWS and NYC can’t decrease from one year to another, or that the total amount of crime in 2025 wasn’t markedly, dramatically, significantly and measurably lower than it was in 1985 or the early 90s.
Same old adage – crime was worse at some point.
I really don’t care when it was worse. The fact is, there were times, including relatively recently, when it was much better. So it can and should be better.
There actually weren’t times when it was much better. Doesn’t mean we should be trying to improve things, but the idea that crime is up from recent times just isn’t true.
Please see my comment below with the statistics.
That’s an outright falsehood. So easily disproved empirically that it makes me think it’s politically motivated.
The annual number of M7 crimes in NYC has been above 122-125K in the post-Covid era.
It was around 95K annually in the 2017-2019 period, and around 100-110K in the mid-2010s.
Crime in NYC is literally 20% higher than anything we’ve observed in the prior 2 decades. I’d call that much worse.
I’m not seeing what you’re seeing. https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/crime_statistics/cs-en-us-city.pdf
When crimes are downgraded it’s impossible to know what’s real except how we feel. I do know that 10 years ago people were not pushed onto the subway tracks every month, there were no people doing drugs on the sidewalk out in the open and women were not punched randomly on the street the way they have been the last 7 years. Ask a woman how safe she feels now compared to 7+ years ago if she has lived here that long.
No, you don’t know that. You *feel* that. I promise you, go back to the WSR (or other neighborhood forums) of 2016 and you will find people complaining about the same stuff.
What’s happening is that you’re getting older, less flexible, and more fearful. I’m not going to tell you how to manage that in your personal life, it’s something everyone has to cope with eventually, but please stop telling stories.
Pretty offensive comments.
It has nothing to do with my age, iron at least 10 miles a week so I’m certainly fit and I’m not “fearful”. It’s what I’m seeing with my own two eyes compared to seven years ago.
People were not talking about being shoved onto subway tracks every month or being followed or being punched in the face randomly because I know from 2016 that was not happening and certainly not being discussed.
I am certainly not more fearful. I’m seeing things that should make people fearful like people being pushed onto subway tracks. That affects anybody even when you’re 20 years old.
And what the point of your comment is? That crime is now normalized? That we have to accept locked up tooth paste?
You chose to compare it to 1985. How about comparing to only 6 years ago when things were much better ?
Look at crime stats from 6 years ago. They weren’t better at all.
There was more honest reporting of crimes. Now a hundred plus juvenile takeover is reported as one incident, and an attempted homicide in an apartment is reported as a domestic violence incident.
Sure, the massaged stats again.
I’ve lived in this neighborhood for 35 years, and I know that the “stats” are not accurate to begin with.
Businesses started locking things up just for fun.
“For fun”? Very naive. Let this well-researched article enlighten you about why businesses started locking things up. https://www.curbed.com/article/walgreens-duane-reade-cvs-rite-aide-nyc-shoplifting-new-liberty-loans.html
So if the stats don’t support your belief, you say they’re not accurate. Stats are massaged, sure, but they were massaged 6 years ago. I’ve lived in the neighborhood for 20 years, and the only time crime seemed noticeably worse was the post-Covid period. But your observations and mine are less accurate than the stats, sorry to say.
If you read the comments from six years, you will find the same type of people making the same type of complaints!
His point is that too many UWSers that participate in the comments section live in a fantasy land, and would much rather minimize these instances instead of facing reality.
Anyone who says there’s no crime is living in a fantasy land, correct. Anyone who says things are nightmarish and have never been so bad is also living in a fantasy land.
what if we just eliminated all crime? what if there was a button to push for all that to be fixed.
True ir False. If they brought the cash register back they can’t be charged with stealing jt. Just breaking and entering.
false: attempted robbery is still a crime
When thieves break into a business with the intent to steal, they have already committed a felony, and returning the property later does not erase or undo the crimes that were already completed. (from a quick google)
Correct. Unlawful entry with intent is at least third-degree burglary, which is a class D felony.
I believe it’s not robbery (or attempted robbery) because no physical force was used or threatened on a person.
What on earth did they think they were gonna get from these places at 6 AM in the morning? They don’t leave cash in the drawer overnight.
They should have gone at 6AM in the evening.
Or 6PM in the morning?
Couple of morons. NYPD should have no trouble tracking them down
And then what? Nypd is not the reason we have locked up shelves.
CVS and Duane Read have taken loss prevention seriously now. They have to steal elsewhere. Once the city free stores open they will go there. Remember. the perps are the real victims. Affordability, climate chang, and housing crisis made them do this. I think those reasons make stealing OK. If they get caught what will happen? Community seevice to remove graffiti?
Yes and I love it. I said here years ago that people should sue Duane Reade and Target etc for creating a lawless environment by allowing theft to happen indiscriminately.
You’re having one heck of a conversation with yourself right now.
Ski masks in August
I saw these two at about 7:20a on w75th when I was about to get in an uber. I knew something was off bc they were continuously looking back towards col ave. all paranoid, as they walked towards Amsterdam—1had a mask on, and it felt like 101degrees out!
When I got in the uber i noticed they ducked down between parked cars, and now both in black masks—and had their hoodies up.
I thought something def bad was about to go down:(
I reported to 911.
They were 2 skinny blk kids, wearing all black— To me, they looked like teenagers! smfh
Disappointed to read they weren’t caught.
This sounds like the same guys that “successfully” broke into the mailboxes on 92nd and broadway and 92nd and West End. They did it before Christmas and then again, a couple of weeks ago. They’re skinny guys, very similar builds, wear black ski masks and drive around on mopeds. One day the mopeds looked the same, small and also black. They came back 2 days later and one of them stood in the road while the other used a tool to take out envelopes from the mail box. This was between 5&5:30 am. They drove off on the sidewalk not in the street. I reported it to the post office authority and nothing came of it.
Yup, they were skinny, similar builds—nothing stands out about them. Young. The only difference i saw in the article was reg mask (black)like in pandemic days….was not ski masks. The fact one guy had that on in the most humid mornings, and their obvious paranoid behavior checking over their shoulder towards Col Ave, is what gave them away. So now to hear theyve been doing ths sht since xmas is even more disappointing.
I already figured they’ll get off easy whenever theyre caught bc of their age. Urgh..
Does not matter if you think crime is up or down, it’s what we feel. 7 years ago may have had the same statistics but it felt safe and I was not checking to see who was walking behind me like I am now and I was not standing in the middle of the subway platform to make sure I do not get pushed. We all know the current statistics are not apples to apples to 7 years ago.
We should not be accepting mentally ill roaming the sidewalks, or every item in a drug stores locked behind plastic, or non-stop jumping the turnstiles. We didn’t need gates or new systems years ago so people would have to pay for their fare.
And the stores that had this happen now have to spend hours to fix their doors/glass, put in an insurance claim – which may go up now. Having a small business is hard enough in this city with the taxes, high rents and more online shoppers hurting brick and mortar retail stores. what will happen when they catch these 2 people? Nothing but a desk appearance ticket.
This city should be fair to all, the destitute and the hard working tax payers & small business owners. Right now it is not.
Have they changed the way crime stats are calculated in the past 7 years? How?
Your second sentence said 7 years ago may have had the same statistics, and your third sentences say the current statistics are not “apples to apples” to 7 years ago. Which do you mean?
Hopefully we all want a much better system for treating people who are mentally ill (or, perhaps more likely, addicted) who now are on the streets for lack of housing. That’s going to cost a lot, I hope you are okay with tax increases to pay for it.
They lowered most offenses from felonies to misdemeanors in 2020. No way to compare apples to apples. Look it up. Different rankings of offenses now, and they won’t match from now to before 2019. The shelter system is growing continually but with no accountability for services, even if they “offer” them. So when there are high needs individuals walking around, threatening people, or doing drugs, our shelters are just a place to sleep and that’s it. There is already enough money and shelters in NYC to make a difference but no one is pushing for results. Our taxes are already the 2nd highest in the country – would be nice for people to speak up and demand results. I have.
“They lowered most offenses from felonies to misdemeanors in 2020.”
What are you even talking about?
I agree with all of this, except the first sentence. Of COURSE it actually matters if crime is up or down.
Crime. Violence. They sell. Movies. TV. Games. We create a violent society and then cry about it. How about a good old boycott of all things violent?
You think there was no crime before movies, TV, and games?
Were these businesses randomly chosen, or do they have something in common?
WSR,
Any reason you censored my comment with statistics?
Let’s not cherry-pick statistics to fit a narrative, shall we?
Here’s the NYPD’s own data on major crime from 2000–2025.
https://www.nyc.gov/assets/nypd/downloads/pdf/analysis_and_planning/historical-crime-data/seven-major-felony-offenses-2000-2025.pdf
Now compare 2019 to 2025, only 6-7 years ago.
Crime 2019 2025 Change
Murder 319 309 −3.1%
Rape 1,755 2,048 +16.7%
Robbery 13,371 15,075 +12.7%
Felony Assault 20,698 29,838 +44.2%
Burglary 10,909 12,798 +17.3%
Grand Larceny 43,250 48,061 +11.1%
Grand Larceny Auto 5,304 13,523 +154.9%
TOTAL 95,606 121,652 +27.2%
———-
Still want to claim that things have never been better? And that’s before considering how many crimes are now downgraded to lesser offenses. The real picture may be considerably worse
According to that link there were more rapes in 2002 and similar in 2003 to 2025. I’m not sure what you’re suggested here. The number of crimes committed in any category fluctuates over time. Perhaps people are stressed and that comes out via violent crime, theft, and other societal ills…”I wonder why?” should be the question. There are many obvious answers. Just pointing to a graph / statistics and being exasperated is pretty useless, no? There’s always voting….