Jacob Rabinowitz, who owns the Amsterdam Ale House, was present at the bar on West 76th Street on Saturday night when he saw one of the children who had previously robbed his customers back in February begging outside his establishment.
Rabinowitz shared with The Post that he chased the child away and subsequently alerted other businesses about the youngster. It was during this warning that the child reportedly threatened him. Rabinowitz recalled, “He said he was going to beat my ass. It was this little kid telling me that.”
When the bar owner mentioned calling the police, the child allegedly responded with, “The police can’t arrest me, I’m just a kid.”
These young culprits, who seem to be no older than 10, have been targeting businesses in Manhattan and Brooklyn for several months. They have escalated from snatching money from unattended bags to stealing cash from open safes, according to workers and owners interviewed by The Post in an exclusive report on Saturday.
Workers at The Stone Street Tavern in the Financial District reported on Sunday that they too had fallen victim to this gang of young thieves.
Raul Gomez, a 24-year-old bartender at the tavern, recounted how one of the boys, whom he estimated to be seven or eight years old, stole a waitress’s unattended purse and emptied it in the bathroom on June 15.
“We’re just sharing what happened with other people, and we found out that several other places on the street were hit in the exact same way,” Gomez told The Post.
The owner of Stone Street Tavern suggested that the boy caught on camera appeared to be part of the same group that had allegedly targeted Rabinowitz’s businesses, including the Lexington Publick in East Harlem.
The spree began approximately eight months ago when two children repeatedly caused trouble at the Amsterdam Ale House, taking whatever they could grab from unattended bags. In February, things escalated when they took food from a table, pushed a customer, and brandished a knife, according to manager Whitney Kaufman.
It remains unclear if the same children are involved in all of these incidents, but several Manhattan bar workers believe they might be.
The owner of Stone Street Tavern, who wished to remain anonymous, initially thought the kids seemed like normal children selling chocolate and accompanied by their mothers. However, the situation turned sinister when the groups began entering the taverns, with the mothers allegedly allowing their children to roam freely.
“The kids will pretend to go downstairs to the bathroom. That’s where all the offices and the rooms that are for employees only are,” the owner explained. “And they go right for the employees’ purses or bags or coats or wallets or whatever they could find.”
He added, “They are hitting multiple places on the same day. Like the day they stole the purse at the Stone Street Tavern, they had hit two other places earlier.”
