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.”
“Work for Food” Most of us do that don’t we?
The Nazis got it right when it came to gypsies. Yeah, I said it.
In Germany where I was stationed the gypsies would appear in farmers’ fields like mushrooms after a storm. Then the village men would get out their shotguns, form a line at one end of the field, and start advancing on the gypsy camp. Worked every time.
“Die Zigeuner” were nothing but trouble. That was forty years ago. Mutti Merkel probably has them on the payroll now.
...yea, I was thinking the same when I posted.
See the little girl in the front?
That is how you catch a gypsy.
You get a pencil and jab it into a baget...bouguet.....piece of bread.
It mesmerizes them like chickens watching The View.
Then you throw some fish net stockings over them.
I’ve been hit up on numerous occasions, with the same sob story being told by a young pregnant woman in front of the local WalMart and the very next day I see the same woman in the middle of a 4-way controlled intersection.
With your reputation you could become wealthy blogging.
I probably wouldn’t like the target demographic much.
_________________________________________________
Well, maybe you now have an inclination how we feel about your uselessness.
"We" who?
You and your pet Gerbil, Mr Wiggles?
gypsies have a reputation and sadly, its mostly true...
You and your pet Gerbil, Mr Wiggles?
______________________________________
The prosecution rests it’s case.
While BART is well aware of the panhandling groups, “It’s a First Amendment protected right to panhandle,” said Alvarez.
That’s weapons grade stupid.
Uh oh. LOL
My first exposure to gypsies or "gitanos" in Spanish, was when I was a kid living in Spain when my dad was stationed there in the Air Force in 1957-60. The gitanos would travel around the country in wagons and wore distinctive clothing. We lived in a small town outside of Sevilla and they would camp just outside of town. We'd see their camps when we took the bus to school.
Our Spanish landlord told us to stay away from them because, while they weren't exactly dangerous criminals, they were shifty and not to be trusted. They were petty thieves. Flim-flam stuff. None of them worked because with their reputations, no one would hire them. They always wanted something from you. That is where I learned about the gypsy culture.
Before I retired to Florida in 2011, I had my own business in Arizona. I frequented a hot dog stand set up in the parking lot of my office building and got to know the owner/operator pretty well. He had done a wedding for some gypsies who hired him to park his cart outside the reception hall and give away hot dogs to anybody in the 3-day long wedding celebration who wanted them. He said the reception was a drunken, brawling party. He said he made a good profit for the 3 days. But the hotel where the party was held, didn't fare so well. They'd taken a $5,000 deposit up front, with the balance of $20,000 due when the extended reception was over.
Well, not only did they not get the balance on their contract but the gypsies had done north of $80,000 worth of damages to the rented space. Chandeliers were destroyed, walls had holes punched in them, the carpet was a disaster and had to be replaced, bathrooms were destroyed and more. They went after them for the contract balance and damages, but they were gypsies, and no where to be found. Phony addresses, phony phone numbers, etc, etc, etc. The hotel took it in the shorts. I'm sure the catering manager was fired over the whole mess.
So from my experiences and other stories related to me, I do not have a good picture of gypsies or various other groups similar to them, whatever they called.
No evidence, no arrests, no trials, no problem. He just had his people kill them. Problem solved. Drug problems erased.
Hangings on Tuesday. Trials on Wednesday.
"We" ME, nukka.
Latest polling data has your approval/disapproval rating at 2%/98%
bubblegummer stock is falling faster than your mom's chonies behind the 7-11 on Friday night.
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