Thursday 11 August 2022 04:07 PM NYPD hunt fashion bandit who stole $62,000 in merchandise at high-end NYC ... trends now Police are searching for a fashion bandit who pulled off a string of burglaries at several high-end shops in the West Village area of New York City that amount to a whopping $62k in stolen merchandise. Video shared by the NYPD shows the unidentified thief breaking into a Rag and Bone shop on 104 Christopher Street on July 14 at 8.05am, where he took $7,900 worth of clothing. He's seen lurking outside the store's front entrance before shoving the glass frame in, crawling inside the store and filling up a trash bag full of clothes before walking out without any alarms going off. The burglary lasted five minutes, according to NBC New York. Police describe the suspect as a black man in his mid-thirties, possibly 35-years-old, five feet seven inches tall and roughly 180 pounds. He was also seen sporting a beard and wearing a black bob hat and a brown jacket in the footage of the Rag and Bone store theft, as well as in another video of him stealing $3,400 worth of clothing at Meermin Shoes on 123 Mercer Street at 6.20am on July 5. In CCTV footage shared by the NYPD, the thief can often be seeing coming out of shops with a huge, black trash bag. Pictured: The suspect leaving the Meeram Shoes store on Mercer Street The suspect also sported a bear and a black bob hat. His most lucrative burglary was on July 17 when he stole from a Christian Louboutin shop The thief repeated similar offenses at five other high-end luxury stores in the West Village, including the Bonobos store on Crosby Street, Christian Louboutin on the intersection of Horatio and Greenwich streets, Scotch & Soda on Bleecker Street, Loro Piana on Ninth Avenue and A.P.C. on West 4th Street. The suspect's most profitable burglary was on July 17, when he stole an estimated worth of $26,500 in clothing from Christian Louboutin, the NYPD said. All of the burglaries happened before or after store opening hours, often between the hours of 5am and 9am, except on one occasion when the thief broke into a Loro Piana shop at 1am on July 17. Every break-in took place in a 20-day span between July 3 and July 23, as the thief would always burst into stores with no customers or staff around. Police also revealed that the only store where the suspect didn't steal from was the Loro Piana Boutique on Ninth Avenue. Every single break-in attempted by the thief took place with no customers or staff around and oiften before or after store opening hours (5am and 9 am) Pictured: The Christian Louboutin store on Horatio and Greenwich streets, where the thief stole $26,500 in cloth - his most profitable heist Pictured: The Rag and Bone store on 104 Christopher St, where the thief stole $7,900 in merchandise His technique to break-into these luxury stores allegedly involved disabling front doors somehow, before walking in and coming back out with bags full of stolen goods, according to NBC New York. Anyone with information in regard to this incident is asked to call the NYPD's Crime Stoppers Hotline at 1-800-577-TIPS (8477). Major crimes in NYC have risen approximately 37 percent, according to NYPD data, an increase that has been mainly boosted by grand larcenies, robberies and auto thefts. Mayor Eric Adams indicated he won't be entertaining calls to decrease the number of cops in the city, but will discourage 'heavy-handed' policing from NYPD officers. Police officers are part of the mayor's 'public safety apparatus,' he said last week, adding: 'You can't remove police from this equation,' which includes dealing with the issues around homelessness and improving the school system. He added he doesn't plan to stop talking about the crime in the Big Apple, and said 'I'm not going to be inconsistent and not talk about the violence that has happened in our cities every day.' Adams emphasized the necessity of preventative measures rather than reactive measures, and said 'by the time a child picks up a gun, we've already lost.' While murders in the city are down 5.6 percent, robbery is up 39.2 percent, from 6,530 to 9,091, and burglaries increased by 32.9 percent, from 6,251 to 8,305, according to NYPD data. Felonious assault rose by 18.6 percent and rapes saw an 11 percent increase so far this year over 2021. 'It appears there's a normalization to this violence, and we're saying no to that,' Adams told Smiley last week. The Mayor said reforming a system takes time, and 'when you look at how to reform a system, you don't destroy a system.' Adams has been a vociferous supporter of an expansion in the city's police presence since becoming mayor in 2021, doubling the number of cops on the city's subway and bringing back plain-clothes officers in new Neighborhood Safety Teams. All rights reserved for this news site (dailymail) and under his responsibility