By Julie Shapiro
Illegal vending is a way of life in the First Precinct, for both the vendors struggling to make a living and the residents who are tired of navigating around them.
Blankets stretch across the sidewalks, overflowing with fake purses and drawing crowds of bargaining tourists who slow pedestrian traffic to a standstill. Vendors perch on stools and pop open briefcases of knockoff sunglasses and watches, chanting prices. Dozens of vendors Downtown are breaking the law, either by selling illegal goods or by selling in a forbidden zone.
The person charged with putting an end to all of this is N.Y.P.D. Lt. Jack Konstantinidis, with the First Precinct’s Special Operations Unit. But Konstantinidis describes his job as a losing battle, where he arrests the same vendors over and over, only to see them back in the same spot the next day. The fines are too low, the punishments are too lax and Konstantinidis does not have enough staff to keep the vendors away, he said.
“They’ll move for me, but I can’t be in a hundred places,” Konstantinidis told Community Board 1’s Quality of Life Committee last week. “The precinct is so big.”
Fighting the vendors keeps Konstantinidis so busy that he hasn’t had a Saturday off in years. He described sophisticated vendors who have the precinct’s unmarked cars memorized and who post lookouts to watch for familiar officers. And when he finally has enough officers on hand to issue summonses to the vendors, the vendors don’t flinch.
“They say, ‘Lieutenant, give me the summons,’” Konstantinidis said. “I blow my top when I hear that.”
The vendors aren’t fazed by the summonses because “nothing happens to them,” Konstantinidis said. The courts have no way to track how many times a vendor has been arrested, so each arrest is treated as a first offense, with a fine of about $100, he said. The lost money, time and merchandise is just a cost of the lucrative vending business, he said.
“It’s big money, that’s what it comes down to,” Konstantinidis said.
That may be true on Canal St., where busloads of tourists descend specifically to purchase knockoff goods, but the picture on Fulton St. and by the World Trade Center on a recent afternoon was markedly different. Many of the vendors did not speak enough English to answer questions. All those who were willing to speak to a reporter said that business was bad, and few reported making more than $60 on an average day. These vendors were out on the streets not because they were hauling home a good living, but because they didn’t have an alternative, they said.
Rar, 30, spread a blanket at the corner of Fulton and Gold Sts. and covered it with $5 DVDs, including “The Family That Preys” and others that are still in theaters. Rar, who did not want to give his last name, said he makes $50 on a good day. He’s been arrested several times and has done community service, but he keeps coming back to Fulton St.
“There’s nowhere else to go,” said Rar, who emigrated from West Africa about five years ago. “There’s no way to find a job. You gotta eat…. It’s better than you go rob people and go selling drugs.”
Rar’s blanket of DVDs took up several feet of the sidewalk, which was already narrowed by the construction barriers separating pedestrians from the water main work on Fulton St. Whenever someone stopped to browse Rar’s DVDs, pedestrian traffic in either direction slowed to a crawl. A chief complaint among residents is that vendors on streets with construction make it impossible to walk.
Beside Rar was Ous Mousa, 52, a U.S. citizen who emigrated from Mauritania 22 years ago. Mousa was selling $30 plastic-wrapped boxes of perfume that he promised were the real thing. Selling perfume helps him pay for his apartment in Brooklyn where he lives with his seven children, though he only occasionally makes more than $100 a day. His business has dropped by 75 percent since 9/11, he said.
Mousa has a general vending license and said the police rarely bother him on Fulton St., since he is allowed to be there. But according to police, general vending is forbidden on Fulton St. between William and Water Sts. all the time and on Fulton St. between Church and William Sts. on weekdays. (Some of the vendors on Fulton St. may be legal: Disabled veterans are allowed to vend there, which opens the door for First Amendment vendors to sell books and artwork — but selling items like perfume is not allowed, and selling counterfeit goods is never allowed anywhere.)
The confusion over vending zones is part of the problem, Lt. Konstantinidis said. Vendors often tell him they didn’t know they were in a no-vending zone. Some police officers are uncertain of the rules and are hesitant to approach vendors.
“If there was signage…it would be a lot simpler,” Konstantinidis said. “That would be a great help.”
Signage is one prong of City Councilmember Alan Gerson’s proposed overhaul of the city’s vending codes. He also wants to ban all vending around bus stops and subway entrances and beneath scaffolding, limit the number of vendors per block, increase penalties and improve vendors’ living conditions. But vendors and artist advocates have opposed some elements of the plan, especially Gerson’s suggestion that high-traffic zones use a lottery to determine who can vend there. The first City Council hearing on Gerson’s long-delayed legislation will be Oct. 16.
Gerson told C.B. 1 that his goal is to make vending laws easier to enforce.
“They’re charged with impossible tasks,” he said of the N.Y.P.D.
Gerson described the complicated vending codes, which differentiate between veterans and disabled veterans and cooked and prepackaged food. Selling illegal goods is different than selling goods with copyright infringements, and different rules apply to different neighborhoods depending on the day of the week.
“Lieutenant, am I exaggerating?” Gerson asked Konstantinidis as board members shook their heads in disbelief.
“No,” Konstantinidis said.
The meeting of C.B. 1’s Quality of Life Committee last Thursday was the first in a series of three meetings the board is planning to learn about the rules governing vending. Anthony Notaro, a board member and president of the First Precinct Community Council, said the issue has come up at every one of the Community Council’s meetings in the last three years.
One solution, Notaro said, is to track the vendors who are arrested, so penalties can escalate for repeat offenders. That would require a change to state law, Notaro said.
Many C.B. 1 members want the city to ban vending on streets narrowed by construction and to take a harder line against illegal vendors — but not everyone agrees.
“I just don’t see them as a problem,” said Bob Townley, a board member, during C.B. 1’s full board meeting Tuesday night. “This is the working class of the city.”
In addition to Canal St., some of the highest concentrations of vendors in the First Precinct are on Fulton St., near the W.T.C. site, in Battery Park and at Prince and Spring Sts., Konstantinidis said.
On Church St. across from the W.T.C. site on a recent afternoon, Mohammed, 39, was selling fake Dolce&Gabbana sunglasses out of a briefcase. Several tourists stopped to ask the price — $5 to $10 apiece — but no one bought anything. Mohammed said he’d been arrested several times, paid up to $120 each time and did several days of community service cleaning the streets. He emigrated from West Africa in 2000 and said he cannot find legal work.
“I don’t have something to do,” Mohammed said. “Where do I go? I don’t have work. I don’t have work permit.” Asked to spell his name, Mohammed shook his head and said he didn’t know how. “That’s the problem,” he said.
In 2004, the state Legislature banned vending near the W.T.C. site out of respect for 9/11. Mohammed and the half a dozen other vendors lining Church St. were well within the no-vending zone designated by the law, which extends from West St. to Broadway and Vesey St. to Liberty St. They were also selling counterfeit goods, which isn’t allowed in any case.
John, 48, said he’d been selling purses on Church St. for 10 years, since emigrating from Ghana. Standing beside his cardboard box filled with fake Coach bags, John, who did not want to give his last name, said police had confiscated his merchandise and caused “big trouble.”
As for why he keeps coming back to Church St., John gestured to the crowds of tourists and commuters.
“People come here for tour,” he said. “People coming, I am coming.”
Julie@DowntownExpress.com
