NYPD violated laws when policing street vendors, advocates say

Queens street vendors rallied on Monday against enforcement actions by the NYPD they say violated the law.  Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach

By Ryan Schwach

A group of Queens street vendors are saying the NYPD broke the law when they confiscated and threw out their belongings in late August.

The Junction Boulevard based street vendors in Corona say that last month, NYPD officers from the 115th Precinct trashed their carts and merchandise without asking for their licenses or other documentation. The officers also did not give the vendors the ability to retrieve their carts and products later, as is generally the practice.

The Street Vendor Project, a group that represents street vendors citywide, is arguing that the officers violated the due process clause in the 14th Amendment.

“If something was confiscated the way that it was, in this case, the vendors should have by law, the ability to go through a process of defending their rights,” Street Vendor Project’s Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez told reporters on Monday. “The NYPD cannot just trash a vendor’s or any New Yorker's property the way that they did.”

Street vendors and advocates rallied just off Junction Boulevard on Monday, speaking out against the NYPD’s actions and calling for more protections for curbside food and merchandise sellers.

“We have a long-standing vendor community here that has been contributing here for decades, and this is a source of livelihood for many families,” Katy Diaz, a Junction Boulevard vendor, said through a translator. “We believe that the New York City Police Department should be following the law, not breaking

It.”

Diaz said that over the last few weeks, the local precinct has increased vending enforcement of street vending, arriving in groups of ten or more. Cops reportedly load entire carts into the back of garbage trucks and issue tickets.

“They've been throwing our livelihoods directly into the trash,” said Diaz.

There have been five such incidents along Junction Boulevard in recent weeks, according to Kaufman-Gutierrez.

One of the incidents occurred on Aug. 23 at around 7 p.m.

“They surrounded me, they ambushed me, and they took away my belongings, my business,” said Blanca Alvarado, an Ecuadorian food vendor who arrived in New York five years ago.

According to Alvarado, in the past, police would ask her for her mobile food vending license and continue to let her work, this time she said they didn’t ask for it.

“I showed them my ID, and I also handed over my mobile food vendor license,” she said. “But by the time that I was giving them my mobile food vendor license, they were already writing the tickets under my name.”

Officers issued her a ticket, and loaded her cart – which she says was worth around $6,000 – into the back of a garbage truck.

The incident was caught on video.

NYPD officers loading a food cart belonging to Blanca Alvarado into a garbage truck on Aug. 23. Advocates argue that the police violated the law during the incident.  Screenshot via Street Vendors Project

Generally, the NYPD would provide the vendor with a voucher, one they could use to go to the precinct and retrieve their cart later. This time, the cart was destroyed and no such voucher was given.

“Blanca would have gone to the precinct and received a voucher that lists out what they confiscated, and then she would have the ability to fight that in court,” Kaufman-Gutierrez

said. “What they did instead, in this instance, was throw her property directly into the trash so there was no due process that was allowed to play out.”

“Nobody's saying no enforcement, no rules, no laws,” she added. “We're actually saying we want it just to be clear and for people to be able to enter into the system and then work safely.”

She added that interactions like this are very rare, and that there have been “conversations” related to potential litigation over the incidents.

The environment for Queens street vendors has been tenuous over the last several months, as the NYPD has increased enforcement even as the city gave the enforcement power to the Department of Sanitation in Spring 2023.

Notably, last August city officials raided the vendors at the popular Corona Plaza, an action that sparked outcry from local elected officials. Those outcries ultimately led to a deal with the city which established the first formal vendor market in the city.

However, the issues persist for vendors since there are currently only 853 licenses for non-veteran general vendors who sell merchandise available in the city, according to the Street Vendor Project.

There are currently over 10,000 people on a waitlist to get one of those licenses – which have been closed to applications since 2016.

Local street vendors say that enforcement of vending from the NYPD has increased in recent months. Eagle photo by Ryan Schwach

For food vendors, there are around 6,000 permits available with a waitlist of 9,500 people for the supervisory license permit.

Applications for the food permit have been closed since 2017.

“The system of street vending is outdated and it's completely broken,” Kaufman-Gutierrez said. “You have the entire economy of people who are trying to work, an industry of people who are trying to work, who are trying to pay their taxes, who are trying to contribute to the city, and are not being given the opportunity.”

There is currently a package of four bills in the City Council that seek to increase protections for street vendors, including a bill from Queens Councilmember Shekar Krishnan which would reduce criminal liability for vendors.

The package also includes a bill which would increase the number of available licenses for merchandise and food vendors.

The bills all currently sit in council committees.

The vendors also have an ally in Queens Borough President Donovan Richards, who was among the local officials who lobbied to get the Corona Plaza market formalized.

“As Borough President Richards has repeatedly made clear, we cannot criminalize our way out of poverty,” the BP’s spokesperson Chris Barca said. “The city must do more to uplift our street vendors, while simultaneously ensuring the locations in which they vend are properly regulated and maintained.”

Neither the NYPD nor City Hall responded to requests for comment on the protest or the Aug. 23 incident on Monday.