Police officers visited the informal Echo Park Lake Swap Meet in Los Angeles and shut it down Aug. 1. As FleaMarketZone reported previously, the market consisted of vendors who set up selling spaces on park land without permission or oversight. Due to a quirk in local law, the police had been unable to stop the market, but that was evidently no impediment to the Aug. 1 action. The news of the shut-down was first reported by The Eastsider LA community site.
After police arrived and started issuing citations, there was a mass exodus of vendors. According to one commenter, “It was eerie, people grabbing their wares and running into the street. There were so many people I could not tell what was going on.” Only a handful of tickets were actually issued, according to a police source quoted by the Eastsider. By 4 pm, few vendors were left:
The news was also mentioned in Echo Park Now and LA Weekly. The Echo Park Now report (and other comments by readers on the other sites) suggested that the crackdown came as a response to shakedowns and illegal “space rental fees” that were being charged by unknown machete-weilding miscreants.
Photo courtesy, with thanks: The Eastsider.