Crackdown on unlicensed vendors reaches Grand Army Plaza farmers market

The city’s crackdown on unlicensed vendors reached Brooklyn’s popular Grand Army Plaza greenmarket on Saturday, when parks department police arrested a man who’d set up a table with a bong, mushroom statue and other paraphernalia — and seized his pet cat.

The vendor – who had a tablecloth reading “Trippy Gawdz” – was charged with unlawful vending and solicitation. The city has not released his name. But an Instagram account for Trippy Gawdz shows mushrooms and edibles were for sale at the same farmers market in an August video – and features a cat named Nala.

Parks department spokesperson Dan Kastanis said the vendor had “repeatedly” ignored officers’ warnings and “remained non-compliant over the span of several weeks.”

An Instagram message to the Trippy Gawdz account wasn’t immediately returned.

In a video shot by Park Slope resident Justin Ward Weber, the vendor tells parks enforcement patrol officers to “stop surrounding me right now” while speaking into a microphone.

“I’m not doing anything. I’m not selling weed. Get out of my face,” he says. “You’re not a police officer. You can’t put your hands on me.”

Parks officers then wrestle him to the ground and arrest him.

“Effectuating an arrest is our last course of action,” Kastanis said. The spokesperson declined to comment on what the vendor was selling. The parks enforcement patrol officers typically issue summonses for minor violations within the park. But they are considered law enforcement officers with authority to arrest people.

Video shows the parks officers then packed up the vendor’s merchandise, including a white board listing “Shrooms.” The officers also took the cat, which was in a carrier, the video shows. In the video, bystanders can also be heard offering to take in the cat on the vendor’s behalf. One onlooker yells, “You’re going to impound his animal?”

The cat was taken to Animal Care Centers “for holding,” Kastanis said.

But ACC…