Police Target Vendors in South-Central L.A.

About 60 police officers, city zoning officials and county health inspectors swept through South-Central Los Angeles on Thursday in a fight against street vendors who have drawn the wrath of some area residents.

The vendors were hawking everything from pillows and electric fans to $2 bags of oranges. Authorities said they confiscated several tons of oranges and produce at abandoned lots, street corners and freeway ramps.

As night fell, police said they had cited fewer than a dozen people for misdemeanor violations ranging from the unauthorized selling of prepared food and impeding vehicular traffic to selling merchandise without a license. They face fines up to $100.

Increasing Complaints

Police Cmdr. Frank Piersol, who headed the crackdown that will continue today, said it was in response to increasing complaints from residents and merchants who see the ubiquitous vendors as nuisances. “They haven’t been a high police priority, but the community has asked for some kind of remedy,” he said.

As word of the crackdown spread, many vendors fled at the sight of patrol cars. Officers reported that the driver of a truck hauling two tons of produce and oranges abandoned his vehicle near the Harbor Freeway and Imperial Highway after spotting a vendor being taken into custody.

Another vendor on Imperial, who sold mostly oranges and peanuts, was good-natured as he was being cited by officers. “This is my living,” said Orlando Salazar, 37. “What else can I do?”

Only Means of Survival

There is no authoritative count of the number of vendors in Los Angeles. In some neighborhoods, they are on almost every busy corner, no matter what the weather. Most see their jobs as their only means of survival.

“We make very little,” said Timoteo Chaidez, who with his wife has been selling fruit for the last six years off the Harbor Freeway in South Los Angeles. “We make just enough to eat.”

Chaidez moved to Los Angeles from Mexico 16 years ago and has two children. “When I first came here, I worked in a furniture factory. But I couldn’t make enough money to live on. So I started selling fruit. . . . On a good day, I can make about $30.”

Some vendors buy their fruit or flowers in sections of the produce market known as the mercado-- scattered around Olympic Boulevard and along 7th Street--and repack the fruit into plastic bags.

Most of them work assigned corners and are supplied with oranges by a boss, or patron, who pays 25 to 30 cents for each bag the vendors sell for a dollar. On a typical day, these vendors can make as little as $10 or as much as $50 for eight or nine hours of work.

Families sometimes work together, fanning out along a street or at a freeway ramp.

‘A Good Business’

“It is a small business for me and my children,” Vicente Mendez, 52, said. “It is a good business because it enables us to pay the rent, buy food and clothing. My wife helps me, and one of my daughters, and we can all work together.”

He sells near a freeway on-ramp close to his Central Los Angeles apartment, starting his days at 5:30 a.m. with a trip to a downtown fruit stand, where he and his wife fill the back of their station wagon with crates of oranges and peanuts.

Police said periodic crackdowns on street vendors are prompted by complaints from merchants who say the vendors illegally sell items in competition with them or from drivers who say traffic backs up on freeway ramps as the vendors peddle their wares.

One merchant on Broadway near 103rd Street, who asked that his name not be used, was glad to see the police crackdown Thursday. “It’s about time,” he said. “I’m not against these people, but I have to pay for this and that, including a license to do business. They should have to do that, too.”