The Crackdown on Street Vending

Re: “LAPD Gets Neighborly With Small-Time Crime,” Feb. 16

As the owner of a small independent flower shop in Sylmar, I support the efforts of the LAPD Foothill Division to crack down on illegal street vending. The activities of illegal vendors have contributed to the close of small florists in our community. Each major holiday they take thousands of dollars from legitimate businesses struggling to stay alive in these difficult economic times.

How? By selling an inferior product; by not paying legal overhead expenses such as taxes, workers’ comp or rent; and by abusing their labor force. These vendors don’t care if they sell you roses with thorns or flowers that are old and will last only a day. They don’t collect or pay sales tax (the same tax that helps to pay for our police, fire protection and for educating our children). They avoid minimum safety and health standards and minimum wage pay for their workers. They frequently send minors out to a corner with a bucket of flowers, with no shelter or means of transportation home in case of an emergency.

If you sympathize with street vendors, would you be willing to support an increase in taxes to offset the loss of tax revenue caused by illegal vending? Are we really helping people to help themselves? What message are we sending to our children when we purchase products being illegally sold by minors?

The Los Angeles City Council has a trial program in progress that provides a legal and controlled means for some street vending.

So, when an illegal vendor is reported to police, we don’t want to hear, “Sorry, lady . . . we have higher priorities.” Illegal flower vending is killing shop owners’ businesses. We’re mad as hell--and we’re not going to take it anymore!

BONNIE BERNARD-JONES

Sylmar

* It was a joke, right? Your staffer, Beth Shuster, couldn’t wait for April 1 and so arranged for two burly police officers to be photographed arresting that most dreaded of all criminals, the street corner peddler!

And that sensational headline--”LAPD Gets Neighborly With Small-Time Crime.” It’s a real comfort to Valley residents that Capt. [Ronald] Bergmann feels that carjackers, home invaders and gang bangers will “take care of themselves” while the cops are busy confiscating oranges and peanuts.

ELINOR J. LENCH

North Hills

* I am absolutely outraged by the article addressing the Valley police officers’ attentions being turned toward “small-time crime.”

A photograph showing an officer disposing of a crate of oranges . . . booty “seized” from a street vendor? Give me a break! I felt ashamed for those officers.

All I could think of was how difficult it might have been for that poor man to get together the money to invest in his merchandise, now seized and disposed of.

In a world where we complain about panhandlers and live in fear of street gang violence, home burglaries, drive-by shootings, and rapes and attacks, I am stunned by the irony.

If the Police Department’s only other option to catching drug dealers, murderers and rapists is to book street flower vendors, then I suggest that they spend their time instead removing the graffiti that spills into our neighborhoods, marking them for future gang activity.

Better yet would be cracking down on that nasty little 9-year old who sells lemonade on the sidewalk without a license. Seems perfectly consistent with the kind of thinking that is apparently setting priorities in the Valley these days.

SALLY STEVENS

Toluca Lake