A New York Home Depot has employed a guard dog to protect shoppers from hostile migrants and thieves swarming their parking lots. Other stores may soon follow suit.
On Tuesday, two guys wearing MSA Security headgear and bulletproof vests, accompanied by a German Shepherd, patrolled the Home Depot in New Rochelle.
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“It’s more about omnipresence,” one guard explained, citing the company’s recent contract. “It’s not like we let them go bite anyone or anything.”
The guard explained that the store recruited them for a variety of reasons.
“It’s not just because of [migrants], but because of a myriad of other things too, like people breaking into cars, that kind of stuff,” he went on to say.
When The Post visited the guarded New Rochelle property this week, there were no migrants loitering there; yet, seven miles away in Throggs Neck, The Bronx, at least 30 male migrants hung out at Home Depot’s doors.
Some were day laborers looking to “shape” for work with local contractors.
However, numerous others aggressively attacked customers, attempting to sell them counterfeit Apple AirPods or asking for tips for lifting stuff from shopping carts into automobiles—even when unwelcome.
“You come out and you’re a woman by yourself; they literally leech onto your wagon, and you’re like, ‘No, I don’t need any help,'” a staff member told me. “And when they’re following you to your car, it’s unnerving.”
She stated that a female supervisor witnessed one of the males cleaning his privates with a water bottle in the lot and that other ladies had contacted customer service to report that migrants stole their bags or phones.
She’s seen the number of grifters in the lot increase as New York City’s migrant population rises.
“I came to work one day, and there had to be 100 guys out here,” she told me. “And I’m like, ‘Oh, my God!'”
A regular client at the store, who only wanted to be known as Cheryl, said she and her husband had a scary experience last month.
A man “practically runs over and goes to point like, ‘Can I take the stuff,’ and my husband said, ‘No, thank you,'” she claimed, pointing out that they just had a couple of boxes and a paint scraper.
“He still keeps following, like on top of us,” she went on to say. “I said, ‘No, thank you.'”
When her husband turned to open the car door, he “put his hand” on one of the cart’s boxes. ‘Don’t touch anything,’ advised my spouse.
However, the man did not stop.
“So I held up my pepper spray, and I yelled, ‘He said don’t touch,'” she claimed.
“All of a sudden, he says, ‘Oh, you don’t have to yell at me.’… yet he starts looking angry. So we hurried up and jumped into the car.
She complained to Home Depot’s Atlanta headquarters, but she received “the brush off,” she said. A regional manager then informed her that they were trying to bring security dogs to two Bronx businesses.
Customers routinely complain about the influx of migrants, according to LaurieAnn Masciocco, who works in the store’s customer service department.
“It’s come to the point where they’re invading personal space, touching people’s belongings, and just harassing,” she went on to say. “I understand you’re trying to earn cash. But when it gets aggressive and harassing, there’s a serious problem.”
Her spouse traveled four miles to the Pelham Gardens location in the Bronx earlier this month, which was also crowded, she added.
Jimeno, a 52-year-old Mexican national who has lived in the Bronx since arriving in the United States two decades ago, was at the Throggs Neck business looking for genuine work from contractors.
“There are a lot of people who have been coming here for a lot of years… asking people for jobs in construction and if they need help with projects,” he told the newspaper in Spanish. “We come here to find work.”
He stated that recent arrivals who aggressively solicit tips have made it difficult for day laborers to get work.
“This affects us a lot, because now people don’t want to communicate with us because they’re scared,” he added. “They confuse us with them.”
One migrant at the Throggs Neck location, who claimed to be from Senegal, told The Post that he earns around $300 per day by charging $10 for each time he helps a customer push their cart or load their products into their vehicle.
Home Depot corporate spokeswoman Margaret Smith stated that the company prohibits loitering and solicitation in its stores and frequently collaborates with law enforcement. She declined to disclose whether the Bronx locations would increase protection, including dogs.
“While we can’t go into specifics about our security measures,” she went on to say, “it’s not unusual for us to use third-party security at various stores across the country.”
