Dog-eaten meat, rats and urine: Stomach-churning details of 10K LA street food complaints revealed

A dog eating meat out of a street vendor’s bag before it was served to customers.Cockroaches crawling out of a food truck.

Mice scurrying beside open salsa.Raw meat baking unrefrigerated in the heat.

People urinating around cooking equipment.These are just a handful of the stomach-churning allegations listed in a staggering 662-page dossier of 9,746 public health complaints about street food vendors filed across Los Angeles County from 2023 until early 2026.The disgusting details, obtained by the California Post through a public records request, emerge as LA Mayor Karen Bass ordered the LAPD this week to stop issuing criminal citations to street vendors who flout the rules.The move will give un-permitted food carts free reign across the city, potentially letting the conditions get even worse.The complaints uncovered by the Post, lodged with the LA County Department of Public Health, disturbingly offer little clue as to any action taken in response to the sickening alleged discoveries.For example, at a taco stand near Hawthorne Boulevard, a complainant stated workers had nowhere to wash their hands and weren’t changing gloves.“There was also a dog eating meat from the bag and the guy still continued to serve the meat from that bag,” the complaint stated.The case was simply marked as “closed.”Near LAX, another complainant reported open salsa and condiments beside trash cans as mice ran nearby.That complaint was designated “canceled.”And in Venice Beach, a complaint alleged that hot dogs, buns and condiments sat “heating in the sun all day long.”In that case, the complaint was deemed “justified,” with no further details provided.The LA County Public Health Department declined to provide specifics about what those determinations meant, or whether any action occurred as a result.Instead, the agency said it has “shifted focus from street level unpermitted sidewalk food vending enforcement, to instead target the larger organizations that contr...