Posted on 10/07/2017 1:08:08 PM PDT by nickcarraway
If you commute on Bay Area Rapid Transit, you’ve likely seen them – women with babies begging for money.
The women are often seen swaying precariously on the rolling BART train, baby strapped to their chests, approaching riders with a cardboard sign, such as: “No job, 4 kids, please help for food.”
Then there are also men and women who hand out packets of Kleenex along with almost identical typewritten notes. If you don’t donate, they take the Kleenex and the note back.
And so they beg, around the stations, and more uncomfortably, on the trains. Are they really as destitute as they seem, or is there something more organized going on?
We rode the rails for weeks over the summer to find out and learned the “mothers” as we came to call them are from Romania and live in Fremont.
Experts say the traveling panhandlers are Roma, sometimes called gyspies – an widely-used term based on a misconception that the Roma originated in Egypt (they originated in northern India) and a label increasingly seen as perjorative.
They weren’t too eager to talk to us. “How long do you stay on the train? How many hours?” we asked one mother. “I don’t know because it’s first time,” she said.
The Kleenex crew, as we soon were calling the other group, were chattier once they learned our producer spoke Italian. One man told us he rides the rails every day, from 9 a.m. to 7 or 8 p.m. He said he was also from Romania and lives in Hayward.
Hayward was also the home of another Kleenex panhandler. She told us she works the trains seven days a week and makes $50 to $100 a day.
“They come on to BART because it’s a target-rich environment,” said BART Deputy Police Chief Ed Alvarez.
While BART is well aware of the panhandling groups, “It’s a First Amendment protected right to panhandle,” said Alvarez.
Panhandling may be legal, but where is the money going?
It turns out the Kleenex crew isn’t as destitute as their “help me” notes would make it seem. On several different nights we recognized half a dozen of them loading into a couple of Audis, a Mercedes and a Kia and counting their haul for the day.
As for the mothers, day after day like clockwork we watched them stream out of the Fremont parking lot pushing their strollers. We followed them to a residential development about a mile away, where rents for two-bedroom units list at $2,600 a month.
“I can’t comment on individual cases that might be begging fraud, but I do know that it does not represent Roma as a whole,” said Carol Silverman, anthropology and folklore professor at the University of Oregon.
Silverman also sits on the board of Voice of Roma, an advocacy group that promotes Romani cultural arts and traditions.
She says Roma have been persecuted for centuries in Europe. Recent crackdowns in France are forcing thousands of Roma to flee to the U.S. where she says they are encountering new discrimination.
“You hear the same prejudicial statements: They are nomadic, they do not work, they are thieves, they will steal money from your pocket, of these things that are not actually documented according to any reliable statistics,” said Silverman.
But Investigator Greg Ovanessian with the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s office has a different perspective. “I have had the opportunity to deal with members of the Romani community, for good reasons and bad.”
Ovanessian said the kind of begging we documented on BART is highly organized and lucrative.
“When they say that they are hungry, children need food, diapers, they lost their job, many people are very compassionate and benevolent and they want to help,” said Ovanessian. “But, you know, when you lie about those circumstances and take money from people, that’s not right.”
The organized begging is just one of several criminal enterprises Ovanessian has run into involving Roma families. His advice to BART riders: “Think twice before you decide to give, especially a large amount of money.”
We had squatters next door after the owner defaulted. 20 to 30 people moved through there. They were definitely professional criminals. I thought I was going to be killed.
It took me six months to get them out. 13 cop cars finally showed up. My the world has changed. Mostly Democrat constituents.
They live in enclaves of expensive homes where everybody is a traveler or Roma or gypsy of what ever name you want to give to them.
The men travel around running home improvement scams doing all kinds of things to rip people off. The women don't work but take care of the homes and kids.
Some of them were in my dad's neighborhood years ago when he was alive, offering to resurface your driveway. My dad told them to take a hike. But they got his 80 year old neighbor down the block. Put some cheap black paint on his asphalt driveway and charged him $9,000. Probably cost them a $100 for the paint.
My wife and her mom were robbed on the highway between Madrid and the coast when they were in Spain at the end of a trip to Europe about 10 years ago. They were in a rental car and had stopped at a rest area for spell. Some beggars were harassing them so they left. Just a short ways down the road, one of their tires went flat (it had been cut with a knife). As my wife was in the trunk getting the spare and jack out to replace the tie, the thieves zoomed in on her and her mom and stole my wife's purse and camera in the front seat and took off. They reported it to the police in the next town but to no avail. The policia said that they were Romanian gypsies and were well-known robbers and scammers of tourists in the area. All they could do was to call the bank and cancel the only credit card they had. They had to turnaround and go back to Madrid to the American embassy to get new passports because they were in the purse. Luckily, her mom had some traveler's (no-pun intended) checks tuck away on her person and they had enough funds to finish the few days they had left and fly home.
But the gypsies also got her camera with 2 months of European travel photos on it.
I would suspect that the CC was stolen. And that she would be asking for the money for the gas. And you would be on the hook for use of a stolen CC.
There was a good TV series about Travelers a few years ago. They are like a virus in the national body.
They are more than just annoying ne’er do wells. They dangerous as hell. Look up “Foxglove Murders San Francisco”
When I was in Northern VA in the 70’s 3 car loads staged a commando style raid on the Safeway around the corner. Cleaned it out of all sorts of expensive meats and liquors before the mgmt could get the cops. Simply overwhelmed the staff. Think Flash Mob. Criminal scum.
She actually said that.
Yep, lots of stories about offering jobs...always the same response.
I have my own in California, didn’t go quite the usual way. I was in a parking lot (strip mall) and a guy comes telling me he needs money for food, he’s desperately hungry. I blow him off (as always), seen that one before, many times. Then I watch him...next car gives him some cash. So I follow him. He goes across the street to a McDonald’s and orders food. Go figure.
You would probably create your own. Demograpics are funny things. They are fungible. Going after a following with your interests could shift the balance in favor of greater independence.
I’ve been hit up for money in grocery store parking lots. I tell them.....if you’re hungry I’ll go in and buy you sandwich stuff. They almost run as soon as they turn around. Lol
John Stossel did that a couple of years ago when he had a show on Fox-he devoted an entire episode to the fake beggars-he hardly got any takers when he offered work...
There was a Streets Of San Francisco episode using baddies based on them.
All scammers except for one or two that upped the game to murder.
The head guy had an RV with a computer installed. Not bad for the early 70s.
I see a few congregating at busy section of I77 and Fort Jackson a lot more often.
Two or three usually at a time.
I’ve been penniless and out of hope along pretty much everything else a few points in my life in my 20s. Not once did the idea of begging ever enter my mind.
Is there less dignified way to travel than by subway?
Look at a crucifix:
Jesus’ feet are both pierced by a SINGLE nail, right? Originally there were supposed to be one for EACH foot, though.
On the way to his crucifiction, whipped by the Romans, Jesus stumbled and one of the nails was LOST.
The Gypsies say the lost nail was recovered and kept by a gypsie boy who darted out of the crowd and to this day that nail represents a kind of special, side covenenant with God:
“God says it’s okay for gypsies to steal...”
On Good Friday especially on the east coast almost all cops have no time off, as vans loaded from Gypsies go on a huge, day-long festival of especially eggregious stealing.
They usually hit huge, high-end malls, and they go from one to the next, alllllll day on that day.
Gypsies commonly refer to all non-gypsies (eskimo, german, Llap, Chinese) as GORJA.
But it has very negative connotations:
It’s close to, “IDIOT”.
My Uncle was friends with an Austin, TX attorney.
On weekends, the attorney would dress up and sport a “homeless vet, please help” sign. His spot was on the median on Ben White, a bit from Lamar near a Target Store. He said he made about $1200 a day those weekends.
The Travelers are not Roma/Gypsies. They are descended from a group of similar people in Ireland. The Roma have a genetic link to India. The Irish Travelers are descended from the Irish but now form a distinct genetic group. Roma and Travelers have separate languages.
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