Video: NYPD Cops Arrest a Woman For Selling Churros in the Subway
Do you feel safer now?
Several NYPD officers arrested a woman for selling churros in a New York city subway station Friday night, saving the city from the forces of chaos and destruction.
New Yorker Sofia Newman posted footage of the arrest on Twitter Friday night:
Tonight as I was leaving Broadway Junction, I saw three or four police officers (one of them was either a plainclothes cop or someone who worked at the station) gathered around a crying woman and her churro cart. Apparently, it's illegal to sell food inside train stations. 1/? pic.twitter.com/sgQVvSHUik
— Sage Newman (@SageBNewman) November 9, 2019
According to Newman's follow-up tweets, the officers told the woman she could either allow her cart to be confiscated and receive a fine, or they could take her cart and arrest her.
The woman was eventually handcuffed, and her and her cart were taken away:
She kept trying to speak to one of the cops in Spanish, but the plainclothes cop kept rolling his eyes and saying things like, "Are you done?" and "I know you can speak English." Eventually, they cuffed her and unceremoniously dragged her and her cart away. 3/? pic.twitter.com/qVIfN7DO7u
— Sage Newman (@SageBNewman) November 9, 2019
The NYPD did not immediately respond to a request for comment. It's unclear what the woman was arrested for, but the NYPD has periodically cracked down on churro vendors over the years for selling food without a license or vending without authorization from the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. In 2014, the NYPD arrested 89 churro sellers and other underground vendors.
This summer, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced that 500 more police officers would be patrolling New York City's subways to crack down on fare evasion and other petty offenses. The Daily Beast reported:
According to the latest NYPD stats, fare evasion enforcement is up 50 percent, even with fewer arrests. The department has issued 21,000 more civil summonses for fare evasion in 2019 than in 2018, while arrests have gone down 47 percent for the same time period from 5,195 to 2,773. Over a two-year span, arrests for evasion are down 82 percent.
The influx of police has drawn criticism and protests, including mass fare evasion, from New Yorkers who say the police have better things to do than storm subway cars and point their guns at an unarmed fare-hopper, or arrest churro ladies.
Unfortunately, harassing street vendors isn't exclusive to New York City. In 2017, footage of a Berkeley cop seizing cash out of an unlicensed hot dog vendor's wallet went viral. Or there was Los Angeles' war on bacon-wrapped hot dog vendors. Wherever a person is trying to scrape out a living, you can be sure there's a government official not far away looking for an excuse to shut them down.