Shoplifting arrests skyrocket in Cambridge, data shows

In March 2024, a Cambridge District Court clerk signed a form allowing accused thief Richard A. Wheeler out on bail to await trial for yet another shoplifting charge, despite the 66-year-old’s long record and tendency to skip his court appearances. 

A month earlier, Wheeler was accused of stealing from North Cambridge’s Pemberton Farms Marketplace. The same day, he was charged with threatening to kill an older disabled woman. A week before that, Wheeler was charged with assault and battery, but the  charge was later dismissed. Three additional shoplifting and assault and battery charges were also dismissed, court records show.

Almost every shoplifting and larceny charges brought against Wheeler, who has had at least 30 Cambridge District Court criminal cases since 1996, resulted in a dismissal.

Wheeler’s record reveals some of the repeat thievery Cambridge Police have grappled with in recent years.

The department’s shoplifting arrests have surged 452% from 2023 to 2025 – more than six times the statewide average, according to publicly available arrest data from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety and Security.

“Shoplifting is definitely the major, major problem we’ve been dealing with,” said Rebecca Leonard, crime analyst with the Cambridge Police Department. Asked if repeat offenders contribute to that problem, Leonard did not hesitate.

“Absolutely,” she said.

In fact, Wheeler is one of dozens of shoplifters charged more than once by Cambridge police between 2023 and 2025, according to Middlesex County District Attorney’s Office prosecution data.   

Wheeler’s lawyer, Stephanie Romano, did not return Cambridge Day’s call.

A person can be prosecuted for a misdemeanor shoplifting charge if they steal merchandise with a value of $250 or less, but punishment can increase with subsequent thefts. Shoplifters can be prosecuted for felony larceny if they steal $1,200 or more of goods from a retailer. They could be charged with a misdemeanor larceny charge, which is a non-retail theft of $1,200 or less.

In 2023, Cambridge police made 42 shoplifting arrests. By the end of last year, that number soared to 232, the state data shows. 

The thefts have forced some retailers to shield merchandise from customers’ reach, Leonard said, such as the Central Square Target, which locked up its alcohol in December 2023. 

The revolving door of repeat shoplifters also impacts the retailers that report the incidents and then must send employees to court to testify if an individual is prosecuted.

“There is an assumption that not all crimes are reported,” said Cambridge Police Sgt. Bob Reardon, the department’s public information officer. “It could be due to the value of the product or the desire not to be involved in a court or legal proceeding.”

Concerns regarding employee safety have also increased, as several employees have been attacked by accused shoplifters in the past year in Greater Boston. In Porter Square last month, an accused shoplifter struck a store worker with an umbrella. In January, a suspected shoplifter pulled a knife on employees in a Dorchester Stop & Shop supermarket and threatened them, according to Boston Police. In October, a security worker at the CVS on Boylston Street in the Back Bay was assaulted by a woman in her mid-30s who was suspected of shoplifting.

Cambridge shoplifting arrests take place overwhelmingly in the city’s squares, from Central to Harvard to Kendall, where larger stores like Target and CVS are located. The operations manager at the Central Square CVS at 624 Massachusetts Avenue said shoplifters hit the store seven days a week.

“If we were open 24/7, they would be here 24/7,” he said.

Cambridge police have observed a strong correlation between arrests for shoplifting and drugs and narcotics offenses, Reardon said. He said officers respond to numerous calls for shoplifting in which the individual charged is found to possess narcotics, leading the department to implement a task force last summer to target thefts and drug activity in Central Square.

With the task force, Leonard said they tried to analyze where those arrested for shoplifting live. But because of the large transient population that travels between the Central Square area, Somerville and the Melnea Cass area in Boston, there is no way of knowing the residence of many repeat offenders, she said.

Massachusetts is one of a handful of states that do not allow prosecutors to aggregate individual shoplifting incidents to reach the $1,200 amount needed to charge someone with a larceny felony, said Ryan C. Kearney, general counsel for the Retailers Association of Massachusetts, a 4,000-member trade organization. This allows thieves to repeatedly steal smaller amounts and never face the felony charge.

“That individual has stolen the same amount of merchandise as another individual, but they were smart enough to keep themselves below the threshold,” Kearney said. “It doesn’t make sense.”

A bill filed year after year in the Legislature to allow such aggregation has not moved forward, Kearney said.

That leaves police in Cambridge and elsewhere arresting the same people again and again.  

“In 2025, we had 1,173 shoplifting incidents,” Leonard said, “just to show you how crazy it’s been.”

The reported numbers might not reveal the true shoplifting picture in Cambridge or in other communities facing rising threats. Some retailers do not report shoplifting for fear of hurting their brand, managing nervous employees or paying workers to take off hours to testify in court against an accused shoplifter, Kearney said. While he could not give loss figures for Cambridge businesses specifically, he said shoplifting costs Massachusetts retailers $1.25 billion in revenue a year and the state $78 million in lost sales taxes.

“They are suffering an economic loss,” Reardon said. “If shoplifting is too rampant, they’re not going to be able to pay their rent, pay their employees or sustain a business.”

This story was produced in Boston University Professor Maggie Mulvihill’s Data Journalism course as part of a partnership between Cambridge Day and the BU Department of Journalism’s Newsroom program.

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