CNN
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Police have arrested a woman in New York City who broke into Robert De Niro’s home Monday morning, according to a law enforcement source.
Sources said the woman did not interact with the actor, who was on another floor. The suspect is known to the New York Police Department from previous arrests and is one of the top robbers in the area, sources said.
Shanice Ewell, 30, was arrested Monday in connection with the robbery, two law enforcement sources confirmed. She had previously been arrested twice in New York on separate robbery charges, a law enforcement source told CNN.
Officers from the 19th Precinct saw the woman walking down a street on Manhattan’s Upper East Side early Monday morning, trying different entrances to commercial buildings before claiming to enter through one door of a residential building.
They chased him and arrested him on the first floor, sources said.
Around 2:45 a.m. officers arrested the 30-year-old woman inside the residence while she was trying to remove the property, a spokesman for the NYPD’s deputy commissioner of public information told CNN. The property included Christmas presents and an iPad.
The living room door showed signs of forced entry, the spokesman said. The woman was arrested on the charges.
The spokesman would not confirm who owns the home.
Law enforcement sources told CNN that the suspect in the case is a “poster child” for problems with New York state’s scrutinized and controversial bail reform.
Under New York State’s bail reform laws that took effect in 2020, theft was a non-bailable offense.
But due to pressure from police officials and NYC Mayor Eric Adams to review burglary and theft offenses, legislation was passed to allow judges to set bail in cases where a person has been convicted of certain crimes. Was caught causing damage to people or property after being released. A similar crime.
Judges don’t appear to be applying that exception, a law enforcement source claims, based on what police are seeing on the ground.
The woman had 27 arrests and two active bench warrants for failure to appear in court at the time of her arrest, sources said.
“This individual is literally the poster child for everything that is wrong with the system,” a law enforcement source said.
According to NYPD statistics, the felony recidivism rate for theft within 60 days in 2021 was 24%. Statistics for 2017, before bail reform, show the recidivism rate was 7%.
Current NYPD statistics from 2022 show the rate is steady at 24%.
