Gothamist77%
NYPD punishes officer for not helping arrest a 14-year-old fruit vendor 44%
By Charles Lane36%
6/23/2026, 1:00:00 PM
BS Summary: This article contains 21 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Framing Effect, and Availability Heuristic, with Appeal to Authority as the most egregious example at 24.8% saturation with 177 hits. Analysis detected 1,294 faulty-reasoning hits from 715 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 46.8% and a BS Rank of 44% (12,444 of 21,886 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 56.90% of the article peer group.
The NYPD has punished one of its officers for failing to help arrest an unlicensed fruit vendor and her 14-year-old daughter near the Staten Island Ferry Terminal in Lower Manhattan, according to a department trial decision.
The encounter drew widespread outrage from immigrant advocates and some elected officials in 2024 when bystander video showed Parks Department officers struggling with the teenager.
The viral video became a flashpoint in the city's long-running fight over unlicensed street vending, helping push the City Council this year to expand vending licenses for the first time in 47 years over a veto from former Mayor Eric Adams.
Street vendor advocates say the discipline of an NYPD office cuts against the spirit of collaborations with the NYPD that have prioritized education over arrests, and amounts to punishing an officer for taking a less aggressive approach to a child and her mother selling fruit.
On June 2, 2024, Officer Serge Jean was assisting parks officers in a joint operation against unlicensed food vendors when his partner and parks officers tried to arrest a woman and her daughter.
The girl, identified only as A.M. in NYPD records, struck the parks officer during a struggle over the family's fruit cart, according to the NYPD judge’s decision.
A.M. then broke free and escaped with one of an NYPD officer's handcuffs still attached to her wrist, according to the records.
A departmental trial decision, issued in January and made public last week, found Jean called for backup twice and briefly grabbed a bystander's hand to stop him from pulling A.M. away.
However, the internal tribunal said Jean did not help his partner or parks officers handcuff either A.M. or her mother, did not push back a swarming crowd and did not pursue A.M. after she escaped.
Jean testified that he had been managing the crowd from a safe distance, but the trial decision found that his own body-worn camera contradicted that account.
The trial decision does not address whether Jean objected to the arrest, and Jean did not testify that he had.
He told the tribunal that when he arrived he saw "a little girl, A.M., who was standing there crying, afraid," the decision states.
After the girl escaped, he told the Parks officers, "Look, you can't always get [A.M.] back, but they're going to be here again, so don't worry about it," according to a description of body camera video in the decision.
Jean has been with the department since 2011, was rated "exceptional" in his most recent annual performance evaluation and has no prior disciplinary history, according to a department summary attached to the decision.
He has since been promoted to the rank of detective.
Anne Stone, the assistant deputy commissioner of trials who oversaw Jean's hearing, called his testimony "self-serving " in her decision.
She found that Jean's "lackadaisical attitude" and "refusal to physically assist his fellow officers" contributed to the conditions that allowed A.M. to escape.
Stone recommended Jean lose 20 vacation days as punishment.
NYPD trial decisions are recommendations until the police commissioner signs off.
Commissioner Jessica Tisch had the authority to reject Stone's finding, downgrade the penalty or decline to bring the case at all, but she approved the recommendation as written.
A City Hall spokesperson declined to comment and referred questions to the NYPD.
A police spokesperson pointed to Stone's finding that Jean "made everyone else less safe."
Monica Sibri, a founder of the migrant-vendor outreach group Algún Día, said her organization has worked with NYPD, the Mayor's Office of Immigrant Affairs and the Mayor's Office of Child Care Services to hand out flyers with services and resources to vendors in place of arrests.
She said NYPD officers "should be trained on how to handle these situations with a human side."
“This is punishing an officer who has chosen a humanitarian approach to helping our communities,” she said.
Mohamed Attia, codirector of the Street Vendor Project, said the wrong officer was punished.
The Parks Department officer who tried to arrest A.M., Attia said, "should be punished and held accountable, not the other way around."
The Parks Department said the officer involved was temporarily placed on administrative duty, and later returned to the field in the Bronx without punishment.
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