Three people face felony charges over a two-day run of armed robberies that authorities say deliberately targeted Hispanic street vendors and the shoppers at their East Oakland stands.

The arrests are a fast win for Alameda County prosecutors and Oakland police — but the victims' description is not incidental. East Oakland's taco carts, fruit stands and day laborers have been robbed in waves for more than a decade precisely because they run on cash and, advocates say, are among the least likely to call police. This week's charges close one incident inside a much older, named pattern.

The defendants were identified as Keeyana Marie Johnson, 34; Howard Tisdale, 37; and Shiphon M. Degrate, 29, according to CBS Bay Area (external source, opens in a new tab). Each is charged with several felonies, among them robbery, an illegal-assault-weapon count and fleeing police. The holdups were reported Monday and Tuesday, prosecutors said. Court filings cited by the office allege the group intentionally singled out Hispanic vendors and the shoppers at their stands. Arraignment was set for Thursday.

District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson credited Oakland police with a "thorough and prompt investigation" that she said produced the arrests. Her office, which regularly announces charging decisions (external source, opens in a new tab) in prominent local cases, cast the turnaround as fast — only days separated the reported robberies from the filing.

All three are charged, not convicted, and the allegations have not been tested in court.

District Attorney Ursula Jones Dickson credited Oakland police with a "thorough and prompt investigation" that she said produced the arrests.

What the announcement leaves unsaid is why the victim description reads, to anyone who has followed East Oakland public safety, less like a random profile than a familiar one. The International Boulevard corridor has cycled through robbery waves aimed at Latino residents for years. A 2014 KPIX report (external source, opens in a new tab) chronicled a spike that locals had grimly nicknamed "Mexican Friday" — crews working the stretch from Fruitvale to High Street on paydays. District 5 Councilmember Noel Gallo explained the timing then: Friday evenings were when many workers were paid in cash.

That logic has never really gone away. Sidewalk vendors — the fruit sellers, the elote and taco carts, the flower sellers who set up along International and in the Fruitvale — deal almost entirely in cash. Many are unbanked. Some are undocumented, and community advocates have long argued that fear of immigration consequences and distrust of police keep vendors from reporting when they are robbed, which in turn makes them appealing, low-risk targets. A cash till and a reluctant witness is exactly the combination a stickup crew looks for.

That reluctance also means the official tally almost certainly undersells the problem. The two robberies behind these charges are the visible tip; how many similar holdups never generate a police report is unknowable by design.

The vendors themselves remain a fixture of the neighborhood's economy even as they absorb the risk. The same informal, cash-first arrangement that lets an immigrant entrepreneur start with a cart and a cooler — and, on a good stretch, graduate to a storefront lease — is the one that leaves that seller exposed on the sidewalk in the meantime. The upside and the danger run on the same fuel.

Whether this week's charges represent a dedicated crew or an opportunistic one, prosecutors have not said, and the case file will fill in over the coming weeks. What is already clear is that the arrests close one incident inside a much older pattern — one that Oakland has named, studied and lamented for at least a decade, without ending it.