If you were arrested for theft in Queens, your case is being handled at 125-01 Queens Boulevard in Kew Gardens, where Criminal Court hears the misdemeanors and the Supreme Court, Criminal Term hears the felonies. The Queens District Attorney's Criminal Court Bureau handles more than 10,000 misdemeanor cases a year, larceny among them, and the office's investigators also work organized retail theft and thefts at JFK and LaGuardia. Spodek Law Group P.C. defends shoplifting, petit larceny, grand larceny and stolen property cases here, and when you call 212 300 5196 you start with a risk-free consultation where you can ask us anything you want.
How Queens prosecutors grade a larceny by dollar value.
Penal Law 155.25 makes petit larceny a class A misdemeanor, and the charge becomes grand larceny in the fourth degree, a class E felony under Penal Law 155.30, once the value of the property exceeds $1,000, among other grounds. Above $3,000 it is grand larceny in the third degree, a class D felony, and that degree also covers property taken from an ATM or its contents. Past $50,000 the charge is a class C felony, and when the value exceeds one million dollars it is grand larceny in the first degree, a class B felony. Because every step turns on value, we test how the store, the employer or the complainant arrived at the figure, since a retail price and a replacement estimate can sit far apart.
Shoplifting and stolen property arrests that end with a desk appearance ticket.
Many store arrests in Queens never reach an overnight arraignment. CPL 150.20 directs an officer making a warrantless arrest for an offense other than a class A, B, C or D felony to issue an appearance ticket, subject to the exceptions written into the statute, which means a petit larceny or criminal possession of stolen property in the fifth degree, a class A misdemeanor under Penal Law 165.40, can come with a return date. Desk appearance tickets are heard Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., and the District Attorney runs a Pre-Arraignment Diversion Program for first-time offenders holding one, so the weeks before that date are when we try to steer a first case toward diversion and a sealed record.
JFK cargo, airport contractors and organized retail theft.
Queens is home to JFK and LaGuardia, which the District Attorney's office calls Queens County's airports and describes as magnets for thieves, smugglers and internal conspiracies, and the office keeps an Airport Investigations Unit inside its Crime Strategies and Intelligence Bureau to work those cases with local, state and federal partners. That bureau, formed in 2021, also lists organized retail theft among its priorities. The office has charged JFK contractors with grand larceny, burglary and criminal possession of stolen property over copper wire taken from an airport work site, in a case built with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey. When an investigation is organized on that scale, we start with the evidence of who had access and what the investigators actually recorded.
