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

The woman, caught red-handed in Robert De Niro’s $69,000-a-month rented townhouse on Dec. 19, says police have no right to press charges and wants 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 with Riker’s Island that her arrest “felt like a trap.”

When she allegedly broke into the home, De Niro was sleeping upstairs, as was his daughter. He awoke to the sounds of the commotion and came to his living room, where Aviles was arrested.

Through tears, Aviles told the Post: “I love his films, all of them! My mother, my grandmother, my grandfather, we all watched it.’ She added: “I would like to apologize to him.”

Aviles also said: ‘I’m being held here for burglary – burglary! I didn’t take any of his things. I didn’t have any of his things with me.’

Shanice Aviles, 30, doesn’t understand how she can be charged with burglary if she didn’t take anything

Robert De Niro, 79, pictured in the hours after the burglary

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

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

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

Aviles told the Post that she was just getting home from her brother’s home in Long Island City when she noticed a townhouse door was ajar, leading her to believe she was being framed by the police.

Police said there were signs of forced entry and that they entered the building through a basement door. They also say they tracked Aviles, who was trying to open other doors in the area.

Aviles said of De Niro, “People have said he’s mean, he’s not a nice guy, but I think he’s a good guy. He could have made a few calls and made my bail a lot more.

Shortly after his arrest, Aviles told reporters outside the 19th Precinct, “I didn’t go to Robert De Niro’s house… I didn’t murder anyone!”

De Niro’s seven bedroom townhouse on the Upper East Side. He awoke to the excitement of the cops confronting the burglar below

De Niro was sleeping in one of the seven bedrooms (above) when the burglar gained entry

Before her arrest, Aviles was already on the NYPD’s radar. She was wanted for a number of other burglaries and previously arrested 26 times, including 15 times this year alone.

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

There was an open warrant for Aviles’ arrest after she skipped a court-ordered drug rehabilitation earlier in December. After being arrested for the De Niro burglary, she was held on $40,000 bail for burglary.

Aviles said she would return to the rehab program if given the chance.

She was caught because police followed her in the early hours of the morning and observed her making numerous attempts to enter commercial buildings in the area.

According to police, she was seen attempting a few doors before sliding around a corner. When officers caught up with them, they noticed a door to a townhouse standing 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 she was entering the home of the man believed to be one of the greatest actors of all time.

Aviles was charged with burglary and taken to the Lenox Hill circuit before being brought to Manhattan Criminal Court for her arraignment last week.

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

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

Stan Rosenfield, a PR rep for De Niro, issued a brief statement indicating the actor would not comment on the robbery.

“We are not making any statements regarding the robbery at Robert De Niro’s temporary home at this time,” Rosenfield said.

Manhattan’s tourist-heavy neighborhoods have increasingly become hotbeds for crime – where brazen thieves make shopkeepers feel powerless

Last month, New York City Mayor Eric Adams called on newly elected governor Kathy Hochul to abandon the “catch, release, repeat” bail bond reform that’s fueling the city’s crime epidemic.

Hochul inherited the New York governorship from Andrew Cuomo last year. She was re-elected at half-time on Tuesday by a narrower-than-expected margin and was widely slammed for her soft stance on crime and bail reform.

Bail reforms introduced in 2019 abolish cash bail in most cases, a progressive idea that has resulted in many criminals being released back onto the streets within hours of being arrested.

“This catch-repeat-release system is only destroying the very foundation of our country. And that’s why we’re losing this election,” he told MSNBC’s Morning Joe last month.

“Six in 10 New Yorkers in the Hispanic and Asian communities voted Democrat, compared to seven to eight in 10 last time. We’re losing the black and brown base who really believe in these basic things. Public safety, housing, education,” said the former police officer.

“We can’t talk our way out of it. We have to be real what people see on the street.

“We need to go back to Albany … too many people in Albany have dug in and said, ‘If we change this small number of offenders and prosecute them, we are abandoning a reform that I have campaigned for.’

“Not recalibrating is a big mistake because there are too many people who are repeat offenders. They have set out to be violent on our streets, and the unpredictability of their behavior is truly…”