THE CITY MADE VENDING VIOLATIONS CIVIL IN MARCH. THE NYPD KEPT WRITING CRIMINAL SUMMONSES.

On June 11, a halal cart in Midtown Manhattan took two criminal summonses in a single shift. The stated offense was operating near a fire hydrant. The operator, a 34 year old Egyptian immigrant named Monir, told Documented he was not near a hydrant at all. What is not in dispute is the paperwork. Since March 9, a hydrant violation is a civil matter under New York City law. He was handed criminal tickets anyway.

Documented reviewed the city's criminal summons data and found at least 564 vending related criminal summonses issued in the first quarter of 2026. In the same three months of 2025, across the same categories, the number was 504. The count did not fall after the reform. It rose.

The law in question is Local Law 122 of 2025, sponsored by Council Member Shekar Krishnan as Intro 47-B. The Council passed it in June 2025, Mayor Eric Adams vetoed it in July, and the Council overrode that veto in September with a veto proof majority. It took effect on March 9, 2026. It repealed the misdemeanor criminal penalties that sat behind most vending offenses and replaced them with civil penalties for licensed vendors and violations for unlicensed ones.

The breakdown matters. Of the 564 summonses, 189 were for vending without a license, which the NYPD can still charge criminally. The rest include 48 for blocking a crosswalk, 38 for failing to display a permit, and 30 for operating in a place or at a time the rules restrict. Those are the exact categories the Council moved out of criminal court. The law also did not take effect until March 9, so part of the quarter predates it, which is precisely why the trend line, not the raw total, is the story.

A civil summons is money. A criminal summons is a court appearance. It puts a vendor in front of a criminal judge, it can leave a record, and a record can follow a person into immigration proceedings. Skip the date and a warrant can issue for an arrest.

That distinction lands almost entirely on immigrants. Roughly 23,000 people vend on New York streets, according to the Public Advocate's office, and the Immigration Research Initiative has put the immigrant share of that workforce at 96 percent. The Council said as much in the law's own findings, noting that criminal penalties fall hardest on people for whom the consequence outruns the offense.

There is also a jurisdiction question. Since 2023, the Department of Sanitation's Office of Street Vendor Enforcement has been the city's designated lead on vending enforcement. Monir says the NYPD has been writing him both criminal and civil summonses regardless.

Monir described a pattern rather than an incident. Officers come back, sometimes the same faces, sometimes hours after the last ticket. He told Documented he feels targeted, and that he has asked officers to leave him alone after being written up the same day.

His summary of the problem was four words. "We're not criminals," he said in Arabic.

That is the ground level version of a policy failure. A vendor cannot litigate the difference between a civil and a criminal summons at the curb at two in the afternoon. He takes the paper, closes early or does not, and shows up in criminal court because the paper says to.

The NYPD's position is that the reform narrowed its options without closing them. A department spokesperson said enforcement follows 311 and community complaints, including complaints about unlicensed vending, and that the September 2025 law removed some criminal penalties but "does not prohibit the use of criminal court summonses as an enforcement tool" in unlicensed vending cases.

Mohamed Attia, managing director of the Street Vendor Project, rejects the framing. He said elected officials passed a law to protect immigrants and the city's smallest businesses, and that "the NYPD shouldn't be allowed to just ignore it." He wants City Hall to move vending enforcement to civilian agencies, pointing to money set aside in this year's budget for exactly that, and he called the reliance on 311 complaints a justification that puts immigrant vendors at risk.

Krishnan, who wrote the law, is asking for an investigation of the department's protocol. He said the legislation ended jail exposure and deportation exposure for simple vending violations, and that "it's deeply troubling that the NYPD continues to issue criminal summonses."

City Hall has not committed to a change. Cassio Mendoza, deputy press secretary for the Mayor's Office of Economic Justice, said the Mamdani administration is meeting directly with vendors about enforcement, and that feedback will shape policy as the city rolls out its first license expansion in more than 50 years.

So the situation reads like this. The Council wrote the law. The mayor's office is holding meetings. The department kept writing criminal tickets. And a cart operator in Midtown is holding two of them for a hydrant he says he never parked near.

SOURCING

Documented, "Vendors Face Criminal Summonses as NYPD Enforcement Continues Despite New Law," July 24, 2026. documentedny.com
NYPD Criminal Summons Reports. nyc.gov
Local Law 122 of 2025 (Int. 47-B). intro.nyc
NYC Public Advocate, Pushing Forward street vendor report. advocate.nyc.gov
DSNY Office of Street Vendor Enforcement. nyc.gov