South End residents and retailers said businesses in Boston are being battered by shoplifting to feed the addiction that festers daily at the Mass and Cass drug market, with thieves threatening store employees and customers with lethal needles.

Randi Lathrop, a community leader and business owner, said the city needs to get a handle on the shoplifting that has shuttered small businesses and caused public safety concerns for customers and employees alike, particularly at and around the troubled intersection of Massachusetts Avenue and Melnea Cass Boulevard.

“CVS near Boston City Hospital, they closed,” Lathrop said Friday at a City Council hearing. “Why? Because customers and employees were getting threatened by needles. People were coming in during the day and saying, Give me your purse,

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