Sorry, officer, I had a biological need for a Patek Philippe Nautilus

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It’s her ‘steal’ of approval.

A Brooklyn socialist lawmaker declared this week that shoplifters have a right to swipe items like soap and toothpaste from local stores without getting busted — because of their “biological need” for the products.

State Assemblywoman Emily Gallagher strongly suggested shoplifting should be legalized while joined at a news conference outside Manhattan Criminal Court on Thursday by other lefty pols and criminal justice advocates with Court Watch NYC. The group claimed it monitored 360 arraignments over four days and found more than half were for misdemeanor offenses.

“Most of what we saw were crimes of poverty-people who are stealing things like toothpaste, people who were stealing things like, you know, soap. And that means if you’re stealing those things, you need them,” said Gallagher, who reps Greenpoint and other sections of woke northern Brooklyn.

“And we are choosing to protect billion-dollar companies, like CVS and Walgreens, over the people who are struggling to get by. So I would say that the true crime is that there is such incredible wealth disparity in this city that there are people who can be thrown in jail simply for having a biological need.”

The card-carrying member of the Democratic Socialists of America said she would continue to push for “treatment-not-jail” punishments – all but ignoring that first-time shoplifting offenders rarely get jailtime and that lack of enforcement pushed by lefty pols like herself statewide has forced many drugstores to lock products in plastic cases.

She and other pols at the event also called on fellow socialist Mayor Zohran Mamdani to follow through on his campaign promise to end “broken windows policing” tactics by NYPD cops that target quality-of-life crimes like graffiti and fare evasion.

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