It’s an endless game of cat-and-mouse.
NYPD cops on Sunday launched their latest raid on the illegal open-air marketplace of counterfeits that has long turned Canal Street into an unsightly nightmare — but skeptical brick-and-mortar businesses say it won’t change a thing.
“They’re going to go wherever they get their stuff and set it right back up in five minutes,” the manager of a neighborhood beauty salon told The Post.
Stores along the busy stretch of Chinatown have been here before. Occasional police raids force illicit merchants to high-tail it when the cops show up to confiscate their ill-gotten goods — only for the unscrupulous sidewalk peddlers to set up shop again when the coast is clear.
Even federal immigration agents have stormedthe street with no lasting effect.
Police swarmed in again on Sunday, clearing out sidewalk stands and seizing stolen and counterfeit goods being sold on the sidewalk, in some cases just feet away from businesses the merchandise was swiped from.
Uniformed cops — part of the NYPD’s crackdown on quality of life crimes — loaded bin after bin of the shady merchandise onto waiting vehicles and took it away as the vendors looked on.
The illicit peddlers seemed unconcerned as the items were confiscated, while others fled and waited nearby — the same routine that has unfolded countless times over more than two years.
Just 30 minutes after the raid, they were set up and back in business.
The whiplash drives local businesses nuts, with the illegal goods blocking the sidewalk and keeping legit customers away, while everything from high-end power tools to ripoff Luis Vuitton handbags is sold outside.
In the past, the vendors — many of them suspected illegal immigrants — packed the merchandise into waiting cars with out-of-state license plates, or simply got out of sight until the cops moved on.
In one of the most recent raids, the NYPD locked up at least one of the shady vendors in April, charging him with second-degree trademark counterfeiting — a charge that is not eligible for bail in the state.
“When the police is gone, they’re here,” one local businessman said at the time. “They always come back.”
“Police arrest some of them sometimes, but a few days later they’re back,” he said. “Sometimes they stand in front of the door. We tell them to move out of the way. Sometimes they do, sometimes they argue.”
The NYPD declined to comment on Sunday.
Additional reporting by Steven Vago
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