Vending Tickets in Parks Climb Steadily as New Arrivals Face Ramped Up Enforcement

Earlier this month, as pre-summer heat marked the beginning of a busy season for the city’s street vendors, a video already going viral on social media began to make its rounds among those selling fruit, hats and souvenirs at Battery Park.

Officers from NYC Parks Enforcement Patrol and the New York City Police Department had attempted to arrest a 32-year-old migrant fruit vendor and her 14-year-old daughter at the Lower Manhattan park, the video taken by a passerby showed. The chaotic and physical confrontation outraged vendor advocates and supporters.

“What are you fucking doing?” one person shouted as a Parks officer attempted to restrain the young girl in distress — her right hand already visibly handcuffed by the officer. “Let her go,” another pedestrian urged, before the officer and the girl tumbled onto the ground.

In the end, onlookers aided the girl and led her away from the officer. But the vendor received a criminal desk appearance ticket and the teenager received a juvenile report — a deterrent tactic that vendor advocates lament is far too common.

A new analysis of data by THE CITY shows that summonses issued in and along city parks for unpermitted vending have increased year over year in the past three years.

The number of summonses issued for those infractions is up 30% in 2023 compared to 2019, the last pre-pandemic year.

All told, the Parks Department last year doled out 639 civil tickets to vendors while the NYPD handed out 626 civil and 337 criminal tickets — bringing the total number of park-related unpermitted vending summonses between the two agencies to 1602, up 18% from the year prior. (Criminal tickets issued by Parks officers are not included in this analysis, as those figures are not readily available on the city’s Open Data portal. The Parks Department did not provide the information upon THE CITY’s request.)

While the Sanitation Department is the primary city agency in charge of street vendor enforcement — with the NYPD also frequently involved in crackdowns — Parks officers are tasked with enforcing park rules. That effort includes a special unit that monitors vendor activities that has the power to write tickets as well as detain and arrest vendors.

Similar to tickets issued by the NYPD, park summonses often cost hundreds if not thousands of dollars. Altogether, civil tickets issued by Parks officers last year cost vendors $414 per piece on average, or $264,310 in total — more than four times the $65,332 NYPD fined them in civil tickets in total during the same time.

And criminal tickets can have collateral consequences, impacting immigration proceedings and securing housing, for example.

“What we saw the other day is an incident that happens so many times,” said Mohammed Attia, executive director of the advocacy group Street Vendor Project. “We know that every day around the clock — probably as we're speaking now — there is a vendor being harassed by a city agency person carrying a badge and a gun.”

Vendors at Battery Park, in particular, were hit hard: They received nearly one in every 10 — or 155 — of the total tickets last year, more than what was given to vendors in any other city park.

Parks Department spokesperson Gregg McQueen says Parks Enforcement Patrol deploys officers to sites based on concerns from the public and has received “multiple complaints of unlawful vending activities at this site.”

“We have seen an increase in instances of — and complaints about — unpermitted vending in parks, and we have responded accordingly,” he said. “Vending without a permit is unsafe, it impacts quality of life in our city, and it negatively impacts the business owners who do have permits to operate in our parks.”

‘A Very Controlled System’

Battery Park, located in the southernmost tip of Manhattan, only emerged as a ticketing hotspot in 2022, when the number of summonses issued there increased by almost three fold compared to the year prior.

And unlike other hotspots such as Central Park, Flushing Meadows Corona Park or the beach and boardwalk of Coney Island, where the number of tickets issued for unpermitted sales since 2020 rose in some years and dwindled in others, the number of summonses issued at Battery Park has increased consistently over the same period of time.

Attia acknowledged that the uptick in summonses may have to do with the visible influx of vendors in Battery Park in recent years. Vendors are drawn to selling in parks, he said, because of the high level of foot traffic there. In Battery Park specifically, tour buses and ferries can bring in droves of customers each day.

The ramp-up in ticketing may also reflect the fact that a number of new migrants have resorted to selling on the streets for sustenance, since limitations around accessing work permits means they seldom find formal jobs.

But, Attia said, the increase in ticketing also points to how the city has dedicated more resources to penalizing rather than supporting these sellers. City Hall has done little to open up the restrictive vending system and provide pathways to bring these unlicensed vendors under the law, he added.

Street vendors have long struggled to obtain the necessary authorization for legal vending in New York City, where a decades-old cap makes it so that only 853 merchandise licenses and 5,100 food licenses exist at any given time, leaving more than 20,000 people stuck on inert waitlists.

But selling in city parks poses an entirely different challenge altogether, said Attia, as vendors must secure a concession agreement via competitive bids with the Parks Department or otherwise obtain their permission to sell in their jurisdiction legally — even if the seller holds one of the city’s coveted licenses.

In practice, he said, that means concessions are often awarded to more established businesses rather than independent vendors with limited resources.

“You can’t imagine that Mohammed here selling hot dogs, or Maria selling churros, would have $20K, $30K, $50K to offer parks for a prime location,” Attia said. “It’s a very controlled system. Other citywide rules do not necessarily apply in the parks.”

There’s been little clarity on how the Parks Department approaches enforcement for vendors who violate the rules, said the Street Vendor Project’s deputy director Carina Kaufman-Gutierrez — for example, whether parks officers are supposed to issue warnings before ticketing, and when and why parks officers call on the police to enforce vending regulations in parks jurisdiction.

McQueen said the Parks officers' first course of action is to “educate in order to bring violators into compliance,” and in the case of recurring offenses, turn to arrests “when it is necessary.” But the Parks Department did not respond to THE CITY’s specific questions about their relationship with the NYPD

A Police Department spokesperson said that “the NYPD maintains the authority to address violations of law” and that “while behavior correction is key” in its efforts to deter unlicensed vending, persistent violators may receive summonses or arrests.

The number of unpermitted vending summonses issued in city parks and perimeters is now poised to outgrow last year’s numbers, as more tickets have been issued between January and April this year compared to the same period last year. Ticketing has increased by at least 17% during this time, which means vendors could see approximately 1875 tickets by the end of the year at the current rate.

New trends, too, have begun to emerge, as sellers at City Hall Park have already received at least 112 tickets for unpermitted vending from the parks and police departments so far this year — almost thrice more than the 29 issued there in all of last year. McQueen said some Brooklyn Bridge vendors — who were evicted at the beginning of the year from the tourist attraction — have now set up shop at the park.

“This will keep happening over and over again,” unless the City Council moves forward with a vendor reform package before them, said Attia.

“When will the city be ready to have that difficult conversation and move things forward, and you know, start doing the right thing for the vendors?”

Honest Work

A little more than a week after the altercation between the parks officer and the teenager took place at Battery Park, a number of vendors there told THE CITY that they’ve been feeling particularly unsafe and are looking for ways to cope. All turned to vending after struggling to find formal work when they immigrated to the city within the last few years; all declined to be named.

“We have spoken about it, and we’re going to take care of each other,” an Ecuadorian hat seller said in Spanish, referring to a conversation she’s had with other vendors at the park about the physical incident.

Sitting on the ground next to another hat hawker, who had brought along her young child, she added: “If anyone comes with their kids we try to take care of them, so they don’t go through unpleasant moments.”

On the other end of the park, closer to the ferry entrances, a 41-year-old fruit seller said she’s always on alert for enforcement officers and tries to leave the park by around 2 p.m., when she said they make their near-daily patrols.

The woman had been a house cleaner after moving to the city from Ecuador two years ago, she said, but turned to vending after an employer had refused to pay her $1,000 in wages.

On her first outing a little more than two months ago, she said, she went to Coney Island, where the beach and boardwalk is also managed by the Parks Department. She was immediately hit with a $250 ticket on her first day, she recalled.

When she learned of the community of vendors at Battery Park while trying to figure out her next steps, she also started selling there.

Then 15 days ago, she was hit with yet another ticket. That time, the PEP officers at Battery Park discarded all her fruit without first offering her a warning to cease vending.

“People tell me this work is hard,” she said. “And it’s sad when nothing is sold and I leave with nothing.”

A few vendors over, another fruit seller said she’s still feeling the aftershock of the dramatic scuffle earlier in the month.

“We’re afraid,” she said. “We’re not doing anything bad.”

The 36-year-old Ecuadorian fruit vendor said she has been in the city for four years and in Battery Park selling for three. Once, she recalled, an officer threw all her fruit into the trash during a sweep, going as far as also confiscating the metal shopping cart and platter she uses to display her goods.

McQueens told THE CITY that “dry goods are vouchered at the local precinct and can be reclaimed by vendors if they can provide proof of ownership.”

But Parks officers, including the one documented in the incident involving the teenager, appeared to have been crushing a vendors’ equipment in a garbage truck, according to a video posted online a few days after the altercation.

“They follow us like thieves, but we work honestly,” the 36-year-old  said.

It took months for her to pay off her ticket, she added, and she had to buy another vending set up, which cost about $300.

But her dreams for her two high school-aged sons have kept her going.

“I don’t want them to work on the street like me,” she said. “I want to see them studying and working something better.”

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