The colorful bottles have popped up every summer in black and Hispanic communities — from the bodegas of Washington Heights to the stoops of Fort Greene — since the early 1990s. On beach boardwalks, at neighborhood basketball courts and block parties, New Yorkers are drinking nutcrackers, boozy homespun cocktails made from a blend of alcohol and fruit juices.

But this year, the New York Police Department is cracking down on the illegal drinks and the vendors who sell them, vendors and customers said.

“In nine years this is the worst summer I’ve ever had,” said Dee, 40, a nutcracker seller from Brooklyn who requested her last name be withheld.

Police Commissioner James O’Neill said at a late July news conference that recent arrests of nutcracker vendors were routine law enforcement. “There is no alcohol in public parks. Do we do enforcement? Yes, we do enforcement. But I wouldn’t call it a blitz,” he said.

But sellers and customers who believe there is a crackdown are alarmed, saying vital financial lifelines are threatened and raising the issue of which infractions police choose to focus on and which communities are scrutinized.

“It’s just another way to target us,” Dee said. “If I don’t sell nutcrackers, I can’t make my rent. I don’t have a choice.”

Most every Thursday in the summer, Dee clocks out from her job as an exterminator with the city and begins work on her illegal private enterprise.

After spending $600 or so at the liquor store nearby, she will lug her ingredients — cases of vodkas, rums, tequilas and cognacs — to her two-bedroom public housing apartment and into a dim, cramped back room where she will get to work making batches of her best sellers like Tropical Punch, Henny Colada and the Fort Greene Lean.

Dee’s concoctions will be poured into dozens, sometimes hundreds, of stubby plastic bottles and peddled all weekend to her longtime customers: old-timers playing dominoes in Bedford-Stuyvesant, basketball tournament crowds at Gersh Park in East New York, neighbors and friends in her old Flatbush neighborhood. They will all be waiting for her, she said.

On a good weekend, Dee will earn around $1,400 from nutcracker sales, enough to cover her rent, which has risen nearly $700 since 2015, she said.

Nutcrackers are believed to have been first brewed in 1994 in the Dominican neighborhoods of Washington Heights before they filtered into Harlem and other parts of the city. Quickly becoming a summer staple, the drink became so popular it earned a name drop by Sean Combs in a Ciroc commercial and was the subject of a song by Queens rap artist N.O.R.E.

Critics have called the drinks dangerous on the grounds that they are unregulated and might be sold to children. In 2010, many leaders in the black community — from the Rev. Al Sharpton to former Gov. David Paterson — publicly denounced the drink and its vendors.

Dee bristles at the notion. “I’d never sell to kids,” she said. “If they look young and they come to me, I’ve been known to ask to see some I.D.”

But in the last few years, law enforcement appeared to have wanted, vendors said. Now, they say, tensions seem to have flared.

“They always trying to beat us down,” said Jay, another nutcracker seller who preferred that his last name be withheld. Jay said he decided to venture into the business this summer as a way to get his music management business off the ground.

“This is going to buy studio time for my artist,” he said, nodding to the cooler he wheeled down the Coney Island boardwalk at sunset. “Ice-cold water,” he said loudly to passers-by, followed by a softer, more subtle “(Nutcrackers.)”

“Ice cold water!”

“(Nutcrackers).”

“These guys are selling things to better their lives,” said Sandra Anguiz, 30, after buying a cream-soda-flavored nutcracker from Jay. “Why are police worried about that?”

Therese Nelson, a chef and black culinary food historian living in East Harlem, said that while liquor laws are clear and should be adhered to, there is a need for a larger conversation about communities of color and illegal businesses.

“Our communities have always been segregated from the mainstream. To survive, we develop practices the mainstream can’t always necessarily understand. Practices that become critical to our survival,” Ms. Nelson said.

“In communities of color when people don’t have a lot of money, don’t have access to dining out, going to bars, when income is limited, the cottage industry becomes a space where you can have, outside your home, a culinary experience,” she said. “It’s part resistance, part respite.”

Comparing nutcracker sellers to traditions like selling homemade baked goods or spiked eggnog at Christmastime (both of which are legal in New York), Ms. Nelson said criminalizing black and Hispanic vendors without aiming to understand or aid them furthers the divide between law enforcement and communities of color.

“It could be really powerful to show these people how easily they could obtain a permit or a license,” she said. “To expose them to resources that can turn a gig into a veritable business. That would go much further than dumping their goods into the street or locking people up.”

With little guidance, Amseshem Foluké, a 34-year-old nutcracker vendor from Queens, has taken the initiative to try and turn his peddling into a legitimate business.

A former college athlete with a degree in marketing from SUNY New Paltz, Mr. Foluké (more commonly known as Oyay Mayo) embodies an emerging type of seller who, through social media, is adapting the nutcracker business for the digital age.

“The nutcracker culture, before the last couple of years, the perception was that it was a little sketchy,” Mr. Foluké said. “But they didn’t have the mindset of making the best product. I put my name on my product. And if my name is on it, I want it to be quality.”

He calls his nutcrackers “Oyays” and slaps stickers with his logo onto plastic bottles of a better quality than found on the street. He also created a rap song that doubles as a company jingle.

To market Oyays, Mr. Foluké uses Instagram, where he also takes orders for deliveries and lets customers know where he might set up shop for the weekend.

And when he’s not selling on Instagram or in the streets, he’s reading business articles.

“The ready-to-drink market is booming. Two hundred percent a year increase, according to Nielsen,” he said one August evening. “The high priority here is to make this into a brand,” he said.

His professional approach has even, at times, helped ease tension with local law enforcement.

It’s not unusual, he said, to notice the police nearby when he’s out selling Oyays. The sight might scare off some nutcracker vendors, but Mr. Foluké said he sometimes goes up to the officers and makes conversation. He might even admit why he’s there.

More than once, he said, the police have turned a blind eye and have let him do business. And the other times?

“If the cops have an issue, I leave,” he said. “The law is the law. I understand that.”

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