Robert De Niro’s serial burglar, Shanice Aviles, 30, claims cops have no right to charge her

The woman who was caught red-handed inside Robert De Niro’s $69,000-per-month rented rowhouse on Dec. 19 says police have no right to press charges and wants a chance to apologize to the Oscar winner. .

Shanice Aviles, 30, who has a criminal record as long as De Niro’s IMDb page, told the New York Post in an interview from Riker’s Island that her arrest “felt like a setup.”

At the time he allegedly broke into the house, De Niro was sleeping upstairs, as was his daughter. He woke up to the sounds of the commotion and went down to his living room to find Aviles being arrested.

Through tears, Aviles told the Post: ‘I love his movies, all of them! My mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, we all saw them. She added: “I would love to apologize to him.”

Avilés also said: ‘I am detained here for robbery, robbery! I didn’t take any of his stuff. I didn’t have any of his things with me.

Robert De Niro, 79, photographed in the hours after the robbery.

Investigators say Aviles was attempting to steal presents from under the Goodfellas star’s Christmas tree.

When the police arrived, they found her trying to put gifts in a bag and playing with the actor’s iPad.

She was being followed by NYPD officers at approximately 3 a.m. on the morning of December 19 when she broke into De Niro’s seven-bedroom rowhouse on East 65th Street.

Aviles told the Post she was returning from her brother’s house in Long Island City when she noticed a door to the house was ajar, leading her to believe police set her up.

Police have said there were signs of forced entry and that she entered the building through a basement door. They also say they tracked down Avilés trying to open other doors in the area.

Aviles said of De Niro, “People have said he’s bad, he’s not a good guy, but I think he’s a good guy.” He could have made a few calls and bailed me out a lot more.

Shortly after his arrest, Aviles told reporters gathered outside the 19th precinct: “I didn’t go to Robert De Niro’s house… I didn’t kill anybody!”

De Niro’s seven-bedroom townhouse on the Upper East Side. He awoke to the commotion of the policemen confronting the thief downstairs.

De Niro was sleeping in one of the house’s seven bedrooms (above) when the burglar broke in.

Before his arrest, Aviles was already on the radar of the NYPD. She was wanted for a series of other robberies and she has been arrested 26 times before, including 15 times this year.

According to CBS New York, she was last arrested on December 13 and about a month earlier when she stole $700 from a Catholic church in Astoria.

There was an open warrant for Aviles’ arrest after he skipped court-ordered drug rehab in early December. After being arrested for De Niro’s robbery, she was held on robbery charges on $40,000 bail.

Aviles said he would return to the rehab program if given the opportunity.

She was caught because police were following her in the early morning hours and saw her make numerous attempts to enter commercial buildings in the area.

According to police, she was seen trying a few doors before sneaking around a corner. When the officers caught up with her, they noticed that the door of a house was open.

Shanice Aviles smiled as she was led in handcuffs from a nearby police station after being caught at actor Robert De Niro’s home.

Police don’t believe Aviles knew he was breaking into the home of the man considered one of the greatest actors of all time.

Aviles was charged with robbery and taken to the Lenox Hill Police Station before being taken to Manhattan Criminal Court for her arraignment last week.

De Niro separated from his second wife, Grace Hightower, in 2021. The couple share an 11-year-old daughter.

De Niro, who grew up in Manhattan, sold the West Village rowhouse he had lived in for 37 years for $9.5 million in 2012. During the pandemic, he moved to stay in one of his upstate homes. from New York.

Stan Rosenfield, De Niro’s public relations representative, issued a brief statement indicating that the actor would not comment on the theft.

“We are not making any statement at this time about the burglary at Robert De Niro’s temporary rental home,” Rosenfield said.

The tourist-packed neighborhoods of Manhattan have increasingly become hotbeds of crime, where brazen thieves are leaving shopkeepers feeling powerless.

Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams urged newly elected Gov. Kathy Hochul to ditch the ‘catch, release, repeat’ bail reforms that are fueling the city’s crime epidemic.

Hochul inherited the governorship of New York from Andrew Cuomo last year. She was re-elected in Tuesday’s midterm elections by a narrower-than-expected margin and has been widely criticized for her soft stance on crime and bail reform.

Bail reforms implemented in 2019 eliminate cash bail in most cases, a forward-thinking idea that has meant many criminals being released back onto the streets within hours of being arrested.

‘This system of catch, replay and release is destroying the foundation of our country. And that is why we are losing this election,’ he said Morning Joe from MSNBC last month.

‘Six in 10 New Yorkers in the Hispanic and Asian community voted Democratic compared to seven or eight in 10 last time. We are losing the black and brown base that really believes in such basic things. Public safety, housing, education,’ said the former police officer.

We can’t talk our way out of this. We have to be real about what people are facing on the street.

“We need to go back to Albany…too many people in Albany have entrenched themselves and say, ‘If we change this small number of criminals and go after them, we’re giving up on a reform I advocated for.'”

‘Not recalibrating is a big mistake because there are too many people… who are repeat offenders. They’ve decided they’re going to be violent on our streets, and the unpredictability of their behavior is really…’