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A Queens man with 167 arrests on his record was busted yet again this week for shoplifting from a Rite Aid on the Upper East Side, The Post has learned.
Jamel Pringle, 39, was nabbed around 8:15 a.m. Monday for stealing 48 items worth close to $430 from the drug store on Second Avenue near East 96th Street, police and Manhattan prosecutors said Tuesday.
As with most of his prior arrests, he was charged with petit larceny — a misdemeanor that is not bail-eligible under the state’s new criminal justice reform law.
Police sources joked that the serial thief “gets frequent flier miles” cycling through the system each time he’s freed on supervised release, thanks to the controversial bail reform laws.
But on Tuesday, a Manhattan judge finally ordered Pringle held on bail — at the request of prosecutors — saying she didn’t believe he would return to court otherwise.
“It would take me all day to go through this rap sheet,” Judge Rachel Pauley said at Pringle’s arraignment in Manhattan Criminal Court as she set his bail at $5,000 cash or $10,000 bond.
Prosecutors from District Attorney Alvin Bragg’s office had requested bail, citing an amendment to the law that allows repeat offenders who commit a new felony or class A misdemeanor while out on a similar offense to have bail set if both crimes involved harm to a person or property.
Pringle’s criminal history is “extensive” and includes one felony conviction, 88 misdemeanor convictions and 39 failures to appear, according to Assistant District Attorney Cory Robinson.
On Feb. 3, Pringle was given a desk appearance ticket for petit larceny and public lewdness after cops found him exposing himself inside a CVS on Lexington Avenue near 96th Street.
Pringle allegedly grabbed a tip jar containing $40 from a café at 102nd Street and Lexington Avenue on Jan. 24. The owner told cops Pringle had pulled the same stunt in November, according to a criminal complaint.
Robinson said Pringle took a plea for public lewdness just two weeks ago for exposing himself inside a pizza shop.
In January, he was arrested for petit larceny on the 26th, 12th, 10th and 9th — in Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island, police sources said.
Robinson cited an open misdemeanor case from July 2021 in which Pringle is accused of running after a person and their son with a stick, telling them, “I’m going to kill you.”
He also allegedly stood outside a barbershop while the parent and child were inside and mouthed “I’m going to get you” through the window, Robinson said.
The “only time” he appears at hearings is when he’s arrested again and arraigned, Robinson said, adding that Pringle “has been given every opportunity” to show he can abide by court orders and continuously fails to do so.
Pringle also has an open case in Queens, and just two days before the Rite Aid theft, he was charged in Staten Island with grand larceny for swiping an unspecified amount of cash from the tip jar at a deli, cops said.
He has been on supervised release since October 2021 in an open contempt manner — and despite that, failed to show up to court nine times in that case, prosecutors said.
Pringle’s attorney, Richell Lisboa of Legal Aid, said her client has been in and out of psych wards, most recently at St. Luke’s, arguing that’s why he hasn’t been making his court dates.
“He doesn’t need punishment, he needs treatment,” Lisboa told the court.
While the judge agreed that Pringle needed treatment, she said she had no confidence he would make his appointments.
“He’s not going to show up,” Pauley said.
The defense attorney countered: “You don’t know that he won’t show up … It is not up to you to say that he’s not going to show up.”
“It actually is up to me,” Pauley replied. “Your client has shown over 39 times that he’s not going to show up.”
As he was hauled out of court, Pringle rasped, “I’m in the hospital.”
His arrest comes after homeless career criminal Assamad Nash, 25, who racked up at least a dozen busts on minor charges dating back to 2012, allegedly slaughtered 35-year-old Christina Yuna Lee in her Chrystie Street apartment early Sunday.
Nash too was out on supervised release at the time of Lee’s murder — following a Jan. 6 bust for damaging dozens of MetroCard machines at three different Manhattan subway stations between Dec. 8 and Dec. 31, court records show.
Drug stores across the Big Apple have seen a recent rash of thefts — some of which have turned violent.
A shoplifter brutally attacked a female store employee who confronted him for pilfering products from a freezer at a Morningside Heights Duane Reade on Friday, cops said.
The man allegedly punched the 21-year-old worker in the face, grabbed her hair and threw her to the floor, according to the NYPD.
And on Jan. 27, a man and woman snatched four packs of paper towels from the shelves at a Duane Reade on Park Avenue South near East 28th Street around 9:10 a.m., cops said.
When a 43-year-old worker confronted the duo, the male suspect pulled a box cutter on her and snarled, “If you keep recording, I will hurt you,” police said.
Ashley Barrs, a security guard at the Upper East Side Rite Aid Pringle is accused of hitting up on Monday, called him a “regular” at the store — which she said gets targeted by thieves five to 10 times a day.
“These thieves do as they please,” Barrs, 22, told The Post on Tuesday. “Some of them actually greet me, say, ‘Good morning’ and proceed to go steal.”
In Pringle’s case, Barr said he allegedly “stole anything he could get his hands on,” including food, body wash, household items, cleaning supplies, stuffing the loot down his pants and into four bags.
“He was very comfortable, confident, like a normal day,” she said. “He has no intention of stopping.”
“There’s so many people like him, regulars who come in the store to steal.”
Pringle is due back in court Friday.
Additional reporting by Jack Morphet
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