New York is giving out panic buttons to 500 bodegas

Time Out

06-05-2025

Roughly 500 bodegas across New York City will soon be outfitted with panic buttons, a new safety measure announced by Mayor Eric Adams in response to a string of violent attacks inside corner stores.
The $1.6 million initiative will install SilentShield panic buttons in delis across all five boroughs, prioritizing high-crime areas. Once pressed, the button sends an alert directly to the NYPD's central command center—bypassing traditional 911 dispatch delays—and grants officers instant access to live security footage inside the store.
'Instead of just having the cats keeping away the rats, we're going to have a direct connection with the police to keep away those dangerous cats that try to rob our stores,' Adams quipped at a press conference Sunday outside Pamela's Green Deli in the Bronx, per the New York Post.
While exact store locations are being kept secret for security reasons, the move comes in the wake of several disturbing bodega incidents: a gang of men impersonating NYPD officers stormed a store in Bedford-Stuyvesant, a knife fight in Inwood left a man dead, and another worker was stabbed six times during an early morning robbery in Harlem.
Fernando Mateo, spokesperson for the United Bodegas of America, has been calling for panic button technology for years. 'For so long, we've been asking,' he told the Post.
The panic buttons will be installed by SilentShield, and their stealthy deployment adds a strategic layer of uncertainty for would-be criminals. 'No one knows who would actually have a device or not,' Adams told the paper. 'That adds to the omnipresent and the element of surprise that we're looking for.'
At Sal's Deli on the Lower East Side, employee Abdul Saleh didn't mince words when speaking to ABC7 about the program: "People get shot, killed—sometimes you get robbed an the police never respond quick, come three or four hours late." Saleh is hopeful that the new buttons will bring swifter justice—and safer shifts.
Whether this high-tech measure becomes a game-changer or a flashy Band-Aid remains to be seen. But for the workers behind the counter, it's a start.