Woman Arrested For Selling Churros Sparks Rally In NYC

Photo: JEWEL SAMAD/AFP/Getty Images.

The vendor whom the New York Police Department arrested on Friday for the crime of selling churros in the subway spoke out at a rally in Brooklyn on Monday afternoon.

"I wasn't doing anything wrong, just selling my churros," Elsa, who did not provide her last name, said in Spanish through a translator to a crowd of city officials and activists who had come to protest the overpolicing of the subway, according to The New York Post. "He forcibly tried to remove the cart and I kept asking him not to but he moved it. In the past I was just given tickets and it has never been violent. I’m afraid of going through the process of getting a license. It’s too much money."

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Elsa breaks down, recounting being taken into a place with no cameras. Says police laughed at her. She has been selling churos for over three years in nabe pic.twitter.com/KXun0XLhcz
— Emma Whitford (@emma_a_whitford) November 11, 2019

On Friday, a video taken at the Broadway Junction stop in Brooklyn by Sofia Newman, an NYC-based actor, went viral which shows several police officers encircling Elsa, arresting her, and taking away her cart. Newman said one of the officers made fun of her and rolled his eyes when she tried to speak to an officer in Spanish. She was released later in the day and given a civil court summons.

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
— Sofia B. Newman (@SofiaBNewman) November 9, 2019

"No matter what the law says, there is no reason why that many officers needed to encircle, demean, and police the poverty of that woman of color," Newman wrote in a thread. "It was an abuse of power, and yet another example of how broken our system is."

According to NBC News, NYPD said in a statement that the arrest was a response to "numerous complaints" about unlicensed vendors at the station because of health concerns. The police said Elsa had received 10 summons in the past five months for selling her churros without a license. "She refused to cooperate and was briefly handcuffed; officers escorted her into the command where she was uncuffed," the statement said. "Her property was vouchered as arrest evidence and she was released within minutes."

Since Elsa's arrest, Bushwick Daily captured another arrest of a churro vendor on Monday, this one at the Myrtle Wyckoff stop in Brooklyn. Police confirmed the vendor as Maria Curillo, 41, according to the Post.

@JuliaCarmel__ @RLEspinal @jamaale @JumaaneWilliams Photo of another Churro Vendor in Handcuffs, at Myrtle Wyckoff.

Photo taken at 11:40 a.m. this morning, minutes before rally held at Broadway Junction pic.twitter.com/8ps3vvmwlG
— Bushwick Daily (@BushwickDaily) November 11, 2019

Local State Sen. Julia Salazar responded on Twitter: "This is maddening. And totally unnecessary. It’s also a reminder that Elsa’s experience is common, and now even more so due to increased police presence in the subway. It needs to stop."

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The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, in its rules of conduct, prohibits food vendors who don't have a permit inside the subway. But getting a permit is a huge hurdle, and according to the New York Daily News, the city caps the number of licenses at 4,000, which forces many to pay thousands for them on the black market.

The churro vendor arrests come amid a wave of overpolicing in the subway system, including an increased effort to crack down on fare evasion. Hundreds have protested these actions by police, which critics say overwhelmingly target immigrants, people of color, and other marginalized communities.

The rally was organized by the Street Vendor Project and Riders Alliance, and various officials including Salazar spoke in an effort to tell Gov. Andrew Cuomo to invest in better public transportation instead of creating an atmosphere of fear in the subway by arresting people for minor infractions.