A career crook Mayor Adams once dubbed “Recidivist No. 1” and the symbol of NYC’s revolving-door justice system is still circling back on crime — his staggering rap sheet is now 134 arrests long, The Post has learned.
Harold Gooding landed on the front page of The Post in August 2022 as the person atop the NYPD’s “Worst of the Worst” list of repeat offenders — and he only had 101 arrests at the time.
He’s been busted another 33 times in the 33 months since that report, records show.
“It’s frustrating . . . for this guy to get out the same day or the next day committing the same crime he’s been doing over and over,” said a Manhattan cop who’s dealt with the 56-year-old serial thief from Brooklyn and the Bronx.
Most of the new arrests were for shoplifting from stores in Tribeca, but he’s also been collared for grand larceny and drug possession. His older arrests included armed robbery, grand larceny and burglary, the sources said.
He was slowed down a bit in June 2024 after he was arrested on grand larceny charges for shoplifting 11 different times, mostly at a Target store at 255 Greenwich St. in Tribeca, police sources said.
He pled guilty to petit larceny and was sentenced to 364 days in Rikers, police sources said. He was released in February.
And like clockwork, he’s been arrested four more times since.
The month after he got out of Rikers, he went to the Duane Reade on Broadway in Tribeca on March 28 around 10:30 a.m. and pilfered 30 bottles of vitamins worth $1,511.18, according to a criminal complaint filed with the Manhattan DA’s Office.
A month later, on April 24, he went into the same store and stole cleaning supplies and three pairs of reading glasses, the records show. He was charged with grand larceny, criminal possession of stolen property, two counts of petit larceny, according to the complaint.
But in two days he was out again. The charges weren’t bail eligible. The state’s 2019 no-bail laws essentially made many lower level crimes like shoplifting penalty-free.
Four days later, on April 30, he was busted in Central Park with a crack pipe, three vials of crack, and five heroin strips in his backpack, police sources said.
The police source who knows Gooding said he’s got addiction problems — but that it shouldn’t give him a get-out-of-jail-free card.
“He has a drug problem that he has to feed,” the police source said. “It’s sad that he has to live that way but it doesn’t give him the right to commit crimes. We do our jobs arresting him and taking him in and the courts let him go.”
In the latest arrest he was given only a desk appearance ticket, and he is supposed to return to court on Monday.
“He’s not going to show up,” another police source said. “He’s going to get a [arrest] warrant and the whole process is going to repeat itself.”
Gooding has served three prison stints, starting with a one- to three-year sentence for an attempted-burglary conviction in Brooklyn in 1994, according to state records.
Using the name Jamiel White, he was sent upstate again in 1996 for an attempted-robbery conviction in Brooklyn, according to the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision.
His most serious conviction, for first-degree robbery in Brooklyn, landed him a 10-year sentence in 2001. He was paroled in 2008, records show.
“It’s probably worth the squeeze for him,” said retired NYPD detective and John Jay College adjunct professor Michael Alcazar. “In an underground economy . . . for them, it’s worth the gamble. The police can only do so much. That’s their livelihood.”
Just before he landed on the cover of the Post he was nabbed in a string of 2022 robberies, shoplifting from a Tribeca Target nearly half a dozen times, always wearing the the same distinctive white bucket hat, officials said. He was released without bail each time.
At one point, Gooding posted a glam photo on Facebook of himself wearing a baseball cap and added a sparkle effect.
“Apparently he hasn’t learned his lesson nor will he,” said Joseph Giacolone, retired NYPD sergeant and adjunct professor at Penn State University-Lehigh Valley.
“We’re living in a time we’re nobody on the City Council’s going to say this guy needs to go to jail . . . the City Council is trying to get rid of Rikers, and quite frankly, trying to abolish police. Trying to talk sense to them is futile.”
Gooding’s mother, Delores Stroy, 72, appeared surprised to learn her son was at the top of the NYPD’s “Worst of the Worst” list back in 2022.
“Not my Harold,” she said.