Police and sanitation workers threw out what appeared to be entire tablefuls of fruit and vegetables sold by Washington Heights street vendors, during a raid targeting sellers without permits.
According to witness Sean Valenti, the raid went down yesterday on St. Nicholas Avenue between West 180th and 181st streets around 5 p.m. Vendors in the area have been busted in the past for illegally selling produce, though the NYPD could not confirm the reason for yesterday's action.
"They really do crowd the streets and they just leave all the fruit they don't sell in the street to rot. Very smelly," Valenti writes, adding that people were nevertheless angry about the sudden upheaval of their market. "People were booing the NYPD and throwing trash at them," he said.
The NYPD press office did not have any information about the raid. We'll update this post with more information as it becomes available.
