De Blasio blames his own sanitation department for trashing fresh food
Mayor Bill de Blasio trashed his own sanitation department Monday — blaming bureaucratic bumbling for fresh food getting destroyed when an illegal Bronx vendor was shut down.
Hizzoner admitted that his city agencies reacted in “precisely the wrong way” when they were caught in viral video trashing crates of fresh fruit and vegetables last Thursday from a stand that was abandoned on Pelham Parkway.
“I’m really sad about this … I’d never waste food,” the mayor said Monday, recalling how his “mom brought me up to finish everything on my plate.”
“The notion that perfectly good food was thrown away is absolutely horrible. So it shouldn’t happen,” de Blasio said of the video that also sparked a local protest Sunday.
“You got a lot of good quality food — let’s get it to a homeless shelter or food pantry someplace where it can be used,” he said, saying it should “never” be thrown out and wasted.
“I think this is a classic thing of bureaucracies not communicating and not using common sense,” the mayor admitted Monday.
“I’m disappointed, and we’re gonna have to figure out some quick, new approaches to make sure this never happens again,” he vowed.
The videos, shared by the Street Vendor Project, came after officials shut down the stand being run by Diana Hernandez Cruz, who said she had worked there for five years — although she admitted she did not have a permit.
Sources told The Post that Cruz had been given “multiple warnings” — in both English and Spanish — before she abandoned her Pelham Parkway stall at the junction with White Plains Road last Thursday.
Because a health department official was not there to rule on whether the food was safe, garbage trucks were called in to get rid of it, the sources said.
Cruz estimated to AM NY that she lost $10,000 worth of produce — but sources said the city workers only took a small amount when a crowd gathered and “quickly got out of hand,” as caught on the video footage.
“There’s people out here ain’t got no motherf—ing food,” one woman yells at them, adding, “How f—ing dare you.”
When crews returned later, most of the abandoned food was gone, likely taken by locals, the sources said.
A spokesperson for the sanitation department said the video only “shows a small portion of an unfortunate situation, where abandoned material needed to be disposed of for the safety of the community.”
However, a spokeswoman for the Department of Consumer and Worker Protection conceded that “the results of this multi-agency vending enforcement are not in line with the City’s policies.”
“DCWP and its sister agencies who assist with confiscations when necessary will work together to ensure this type of wastefulness does not happen again,” a spokesperson told The Post.
Cruz told WABC that she plans to get a permit to try to continue running her stand.
The Street Vendor Project insisted that she should not have been “criminalized” but given “the opportunity to formalize her business and get a permit.”
“In the middle of a pandemic, in the Bronx where 1 in 5 don’t have enough to eat … The systemic abuse of our city’s micro-businesses and disregard for hunger is a travesty,” the activist group said.
