Are Oakland vendors being harassed by cops? 48%
By Jose Fermoso19%
7/17/2026, 11:24:00 PM
Keywords: Broadway, City Hall, Lake Merritt, Oakland Police Department, Protests, Public Safety, Raids, Telegraph Avenue, Vendors
BS Summary: This article contains 34 faulty reasoning types, including Appeal to Emotion, Appeal to Authority, and Negativity Bias, with Anecdotal as the most egregious example at 19.3% saturation with 320 hits. Analysis detected 2,747 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,662 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 49.6% and a BS Rank of 48% (10,680 of 20,515 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 52.10% of the article peer group.
In the last two and a half months, multiple Oakland street vendors have been targeted by police with arrests or property destruction, according to vendors who spoke before the City Council Tuesday.
As part of a day of protest, vendors spoke at four separate council committee meetings to discuss their plight, including committees on Community and Economic Development and Public Safety.
The vendors were at City Hall for more than nine hours.
Robbie Powelson, an attorney affiliated with the Berkeley Law Center, filed a lawsuit on July 9 against the city to obtain public records related to the vendor raids as well as city abatements of homeless encampments.
In a press release announcing the lawsuit, he said Oakland police officers have destroyed vendors’ possessions “without warning, records or oversight.”
Powelson told The Oaklandside that he submitted a public records request to the city of Oakland regarding a First Friday raid on May 1, but he received an incomplete response.
Several vendors, most of whom said they sold food or drinks, told the council that they received no warning about the raids, which they say took place between May and July, and were not notified about how they could retrieve their property, or even whether it could be retrieved.
“Numerous street vendors have shared the difficulties, misinformation, and confusion they experienced in navigating the process to obtain all their legal paperwork,” a press release from the vendors said.
Polweson said the police department’s actions raised constitutional issues about the legality of destroying property without a hearing.
He also said the Oakland Police Department’s actions may have violated state law.
The Safe Sidewalk Vending Act decriminalized street vending statewide in 2018.
“I was shocked to see the level of belligerence the OPD is exhibiting towards people,” Powelson told The Oaklandside.
At one of the committee meetings, an East Bay resident named Madeline Stacy said she showed up to oppose the “recent direction the city has taken against our street vendors.”
“It is violent gatekeeping,” she said.
“The courts have already decided over and over again across California that your approach is a violation of street vendors’ constitutional rights.
Every dollar spent policing vendors should be redirected into small business grants, equipment subsidies, and assistance programs.
Street vendors are entrepreneurs and masters of making something out of nothing.
Their skill set should be recognized, respected, and honored, not criminalized.”
Police say one raid involved underage alcohol sales
In videos shown to The Oaklandside, OPD officers are seen taking merchandise and display items, such as tables and canopies, from vendors.
In one of the videos, which documents a May 1 raid on a vendor near the Fox Theater on Telegraph Avenue, an OPD officer picks up a water cooler that appears to be full of drinks and throws it into a trash compactor.
Another video, taken on July 10, shows an officer getting in a vehicle, which vendor Dashawn Tollar said belonged to her, and driving it away.
Tollar told the Public Safety Committee that the police never told her where they took her goods.
“ The city police seized my product and setup, leading me to not know where my product is at, and they never gave me a receipt for it, leading me to be unhoused,“ she said.
That product, according to an OPD press release, included alcoholic beverages sold to an underage decoy buyer on July 10.
The department’s statement did not name Tollar, but Powelson, the attorney, confirmed it was referencing the same event.
“The vendor also sold alcohol to an undercover OPD officer in a separate transaction,” the city said.
The OPD said she had been previously alerted by officers with the city’s Alcoholic Beverage Action Team, on June 19, not to sell alcohol because she lacked a permit and that “continuing without proper permits was unlawful.”
During the raid on July 10, OPD said, officers arrested her for possessing and serving alcohol in a public park and booked her into Santa Rita Jail.
The OPD said in its release that it relocated the vendor’s car, which was parked on the grass, because of a “hostile” crowd and “per OPD policy” before having it towed.
The OPD did not respond before press time to a query from The Oaklandside about which policy was guiding their actions.
OPD said in the press release that Tollar had more than 75 outstanding parking citations.
In an Instagram post, Tollar wrote, “I can admit that what I did was wrong and I learned my lesson,” but claimed the police illegally searched her and her vehicle and did not read her her rights before putting her under arrest.
In their public statements this week at City Hall, the vendors documented several raids that have taken place in recent months.
On April 17, a Facebook post showed the OPD and the city raiding vendors in the Fruitvale District, including the destruction of their food coolers.
On May 1, a video shows the OPD removing the goods of a woman who was selling lemonade on Broadway near the Paramount Theater, even though vendors claim she had a permit to sell.
The same day, also on Broadway near 19th Street, a Caribbean food stall was raided and removed, as was a hot dog vendor in the same area.
Another video from that day appears to show the removal of another Oakland vendor’s operation at Broadway and 17th Street, with food destroyed.
A May 2 Facebook reel shows a group of OPD officers taking away food and removing stalls.
A June 5 Facebook post shows a raid on a food stall on 82nd Avenue and Bancroft Avenue, where product was also thrown into a trash compactor.
The owners of that food vendor business had previously told The Oaklandside that they’d cooperated as witnesses for city investigations into collisions that have occurred at the intersection.
The vendors said they’re especially distraught that their food investments were destroyed in these raids, a practice they regard as unnecessarily cruel given their low-income status.
‘We take care of the things that we have to’
We’ve asked OPD to explain its actions during the vendor raids and its policy on vendor removal, including how it determines whether a vendor has a permit.
According to Powelson and several of the vendors, some of those who were forcibly removed had valid vending permits from the city.
We’ve also asked the city for any official guidance or training manuals that govern vendor removal.
Spokespeople for the city and OPD did not immediately reply to The Oaklandside’s queries.
Powelson told The Oaklandside that he became aware of the raids through his work with Anita De Asis Miralle, otherwise known as Needa Bee, on the civil rights of unhoused people.
Miralle, a vendor for more than 35 years, has helped unhoused residents find housing in the aftermath of their raids.
She was unhoused in Oakland for many years, herself.
She’s also on the organizing team of 510 Day, a yearly anti-gentrification day of action in Oakland that also includes support for street vending.
Miralle was the lead plaintiff in a 2018 lawsuit against Oakland that led to a 2022 settlement agreement that changed the city’s approach to encampment removals, including by requiring the city to avoid removals during rain and to provide more advance notice.
Under Oakland’s encampment rules, the city typically has to hold onto seized property for at least 90 days at a storage facility and keep the property in the same condition it was in when it was collected.
At a meeting of the City Council’s Public Works and Transportation Committee on Tuesday, Miralle said she saw the recent raids on vendors as an important civil rights issue because they raise questions of “who gets to exist in a public space” and “whether Oakland remains a city for working-class families.”
As a street vendor and advocate for unhoused people, Miralle told The Oaklandside that she sees parallels in the city’s response to each group.
She said that the ability to sell goods on the streets is what allows many people in Oakland to pay rent and feed their children.
Another vendor, Joyous Miralle, Anita’s daughter, said at the same meeting that without the ability to sell goods, her family “would not be able to survive in Oakland’s cost of living.”
Joyous was briefly arrested by police after she took a video of the raid on Tollar’s stand.
Miralle, her mother, said she was released without charges.
Recording video of a public event is protected under the First Amendment.
The raids on street vendors are just the latest flashpoint on vending in Oakland.
During the pandemic, many sellers set up shop around Lake Merritt, which triggered complaints from some residents and businesses about trash and noise.
That led the city to set up a pilot program for vendors to assist them in registering with the city.
Racial tensions have arisen in some cases, with many of the vendors around Lake Merritt being Black, and many of the nearby residents being white.
Some neighbors have also complained about crowds on the city’s roads around Lake Merritt, which led to the installation of costly parking meters, including during popular weekend times, which some Oakland residents opposed, saying they would chase away lower-income Black, brown, and Asian communities.
Another vendor who spoke before the Public Works and Transportation Committee on Tuesday, Shinobe Howard, said that vendors have been responsive to Oakland’s permit requests and have tried to be a responsible presence, but need help from the city to continue doing so.
He said Lake Merritt vendors, for instance, have asked the city’s public works department for larger garbage cans to hold their trash.
“We clean up at the lake,” he said.
“We pick up the trash when we vend and when we leave.
At the end of the day, we are just vendors, and we take care of the things that we have to.”
Speakers
8speakers48%attributed speech866writer words
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100%flagged-word coverageJoyous Miralle
31 attributed words3.9% of attributed speech75% writer coverage
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