The number of NYPD tickets in 2024 was five times higher than in 2019, when the police were the primary enforcers of vendor rules before the pandemic hit and the city temporarily scaled back enforcement. It’s also twice as many as in 2023, when the police issued about 4,213 tickets to vendors.

Police confiscate the goods of a street vendor near the 103 St-Corona Plaza 7 train station in Queens on Oct. 24, 2024. Photo by Adi Talwar.

A licensed and permitted street vendor in Midtown Manhattan, who has worked in the area for decades, said he received several dozen tickets from the New York City Police Department (NYPD) in 2024—part of an aggressive crackdown on street vendors that the city began last year.

The vendor, who preferred not to be identified by name for fear of police retaliation, said that from October 2024 through the first week of March—and taking into account his management of three other food carts—he received about 160 tickets from the NYPD, including more than 20 criminal tickets this year alone.

The tickets were mostly for minor infractions, such as standing a few inches from the curb or crosswalk, explained Mohamed Attia, director of the Street Vendor Project, who served as the vendor’s English translator in a conversation with City Limits.

“What’s going on here? I’m doing everything I can. I’m following the law, and yet the NYPD is just coming at me and coming at me with all these little infractions and giving me a hard time, and giving my partners and my employees a hard time,” the vendor said in Arabic.

Attia said his group has heard similar stories from vendors around the city. “You don’t really see the [NY]PD getting involved with any other small business enforcement,” he added.

In total, the NYPD issued 9,376 tickets to vendors in 2024, according to City Limits’ analysis of the police department’s quarterly reports. The majority of these summonses, 67.5 percent, were issued in the second half of last year, around the time the Midtown vendor began receiving more summonses.

The number of NYPD tickets in 2024 was five times higher than in 2019, when the police were the primary enforcers of vendor rules before the pandemic hit and the city temporarily scaled back enforcement. It’s also twice as many as in 2023, when the police issued about 4,213 tickets to vendors.

Over the last few years, vendor oversight has changed hands multiple times. In 2021, then-Mayor Bill de Blasio put the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection in charge, part of his pledge to shift responsibility away from the police after years of complaints from vendors and advocates. 

After Eric Adams took office, the NYPD resumed a more active role in ticketing vendors; in 2023, the mayor assigned the Department of Sanitation (DSNY) as the lead oversight agency, though the police have remained heavily involved.

At a recent City Council hearing, NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch said the NYPD is called upon when DSNY staff is not available.

“At the Department of Sanitation, we weren’t able to cover things like weekends, nights as examples,” Tish said, referring to her former role as a DSNY commissioner. “And so when that happens, we would regularly call on the NYPD to cover where DSNY staffing was either not available, or not working.”

When asked about the increase in tickets last year, an NYPD spokesperson referred to other comments made by Tisch during the March 11 budget hearing, in which she stated that they act based on complaints from the public.

“I want to be very straightforward about this: quality of life enforcement is based on community complaints. It is about listening to the people in our neighborhoods who are calling 311 and pleading for someone to come and help them,” she said.

While the NYPD shared data on an increase in the number of general complaints made to 311—which grew by 106 percent from 2018 to 2024—it did not provide data on street vendor complaints specifically, nor did it elaborate on how a general complaint can result in vending enforcement.

“The paradigms that we have in New York City, around vending, are broken, and need to be addressed,” Tisch said at the recent hearing. “This includes the laws, the operations, the whole thing.”

With the shift to Sanitation as the primary enforcer in 2023, DSNY created the new Vending Bureau, which launched with nearly 40 employees at the time. As of November 2024, DSNY reported that it had 87 Sanitation Police officers, as well as 24 lieutenants and three inspectors, all involved in vending enforcement.

Sanitation officials have called for more stringent enforcement in the past, and during the hearing, Commissioner Tish floated the idea of expanding the DSNY police force further.

“I shouldn’t even be saying this because I’m not Sanitation Commissioner, but when I was there, the Department of Sanitation was not adequately staffed to handle vending enforcement at the scale required in New York City, and that was a model that actually worked and one worth consideration of future investments,” she told lawmakers.

Street vendors near the 7 train Junction Boulevard station in Queens in October 2024. Photo by Adi Talwar.

Still, like the NYPD, the DSNY also increased the number of tickets issued to vendors last year, doling out 4,144. That’s more than double the 1,535 tickets the department issued in just eight months in 2023, after the city made DSNY responsible for enforcement that April.

Between Oct. 15 and Jan. 15, DSNY issued 400 summonses in the Elmhurst, North Corona and Jackson Heights neighborhoods of Queens alone as part of Operation Restore Roosevelt, in which the city cracked down on “quality of life” issues along the bust thoroughfare.

A spokesperson said the department didn’t create street vending laws nor set the fines, but just enforces existing laws, adding that they focus on safety issues, items left overnight, dirty conditions, and installations blocking curbs, subway entrances, bus stops, sidewalks, or store entrances.

In addition to writing summonses, DSNY confiscates abandoned or non-compliant material from street vendors, and in 2024, there were more confiscations than tickets: 4,323 versus 4,144, respectively. The department explained that summonses are issued to a person who owns or claims the material. But a person is not always present, so confiscations sometimes occur when setups are abandoned.

In 2024, the department donated 800,000 pounds of food confiscated from street vendors and composted another 93,000 pounds, according to a spokesperson.

But street vendors and advocates say the enforcement is overly punitive, and that many vendors are unable to operate legally, since the city limits the number of licenses available to those looking to sell on the street. 

“City leaders love to say New York is a City of immigrants where small businesses are the backbone of our communities,” said Mohamed Attia, managing director at the Street Vendors Project, an advocacy group for city vendors. “Why then do their policies force our city’s smallest businesses, street vendors, into a system of outdated, discriminatory laws, offering handcuffs and fines rather than business licensing?”

In response to complaints from vendors and advocates, the City Council passed Local Law 18 in 2021. The law was designed to both lift the decades-old cap on the number of vending permits available and undermine the underground market for those permits. However, the roll-out of new permits and licenses has been slow.

Under the law, the NYC Department of Health and Mental Hygiene is required to offer 445 applications for the new now-called “supervisory licenses” each year, starting July 1, 2022. After an initial delay, 713 vendors have obtained a supervisory license, the first step in a two-part process, a spokesperson from the Health Department detailed. A vendor with a supervisory license can apply for a Supervisory License permit, the second step of the process, at any time.

However, only 452 people have started the process for a permit, and 371 vendors have actually received a permit so far. City lawmakers have introduced several bills to further reform the permitting process, including one that would eventually lift the cap on licenses and another that would remove criminal penalties for vending.

Advocates say the stakes are even higher now under Donald Trump’s presidency, as the federal government carries out an immigration crackdown. An estimated 95 percent of the city’s vendors are immigrant New Yorkers, according to the Street Vendor Project.

“This is a moment of urgency where we need action from our elected leaders,” Attia said. “Our city’s policies should support our economy while uplifting our values, rather than imitating the Trump administration’s cruel agenda.”

To reach the reporter behind this story, contact Daniel@citylimits.org. To reach the editor, contact Jeanmarie@citylimits.org

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