Social media users have expressed bewilderment after a video made the rounds Friday showing the moment NYC Sanitation workers dumped a Chinatown shopkeeper’s wares after repeatedly blocking the sidewalk.
The incident told repeat offender, Mohammad Ullah involved the NYPD being called in to remove the East Broadway based shopkeeper’s wares after complaints that his fruit and vegetable stands were blocking the sidewalk.
Unlicensed and up to his eyeballs in $60K in unpaid city fines a report via the nypost tells how the city sent in cops on February to take down the illicit shopkeeper’s wares.
Wearily complying, Mohammad Ullah told how he began moving his wares only to shortly discover to his horror that cops had instead called sanitation because the man wasn’t going fast enough.
Told the repeat shop offender: ‘The cop came and told me to move, so I started moving the boxes,’
‘Son of a bitch sits in his car and calls sanitation, then they come and take everything. He was watching me move the boxes and he still called men to take it away. It was like a robbery. I lost $8,300 of merchandise in one day.’
Ironically Ullah had only just bought the fruit the day before.
Reiterated the hustling shopkeeper, ‘It was all fresh,’
‘They threw out 52 boxes of fresh cherries — those were $3 a pound! There was lettuce, tomatoes, green peppers, grapefruit, Chinese pears. But the worst was the oranges. Everyone here wants the Mandarin oranges, and they’re all gone.’
NYC cracking down on fruit stores that put out merchandise more then 4 feet from store.
Posted by Gary Schlesinger on Thursday, February 18, 2016
New Yorkers who watched the produce dump on Facebook (since shared over 7100 times) blasted the city for wasting the food, saying it should have been given to the homeless.
Complained one social media user: ‘This has to be the dumbest s*** in the world so many people hungry and we’re wasting food over f***ing regulations.’
Told another: ‘The Dept of Sanitation and NYC should be ashamed,’
‘That food could have been donated to a shelter or given to the homeless,’
‘This is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to “waste” in NYC.’
To boot Ullah has also told that the city ought to have given the fruit to the hungry and less fortunate.
Told the shopkeeper: ‘They took all my stuff and just threw it in the garbage. It’s such a waste,’
‘People have to eat.’
When asked why they didn’t give the fruit to the homeless, the Department of Sanitation responded they were simply following orders to dispose of the goods after being called by the NYPD. Indeed.
