It's bad enough that the "broken windows theory" of policing, with its constant harassment of small-time hustlers, is back in vogue in New York City. Do they have to steal the churros, too?

DNA Info reports today on the plight of churro vendors in the NYC subway system. It sounds like a real pain in the neck! First of all, because you are necessarily already poor in order to work full time as a subway churro vendor. Second of all, because NYPD officers are constantly ticketing or arresting you for selling food without a license. And third of all because they are stone cold eating your churros.

Once police arrest [churro vendor Ana] Alvarado, they confiscate the churros and take her to the local precinct, where she’s had to watch police officers eat her churros in front of her, she said. Then they toss what’s left of her inventory into a bag, she said.

“They take the churros, saying they need them for evidence and that they will return them, but they don’t return them,” said Alvarado, in Spanish. “When they get to the precinct, whoever wants one grabs one, and whatever is left they put in a black bag.”

Give back the churros man.

#NYPD #StopStealingChurros.

(With all due respect to hardworking subway churro vendors, cold churros are gross.)

[Photo: Flickr]