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.”
Whoa. CBS just figured out that a lot of panhandlers are professionals. Film at 11.
“Gypsies, tramps and thieves
We heard it from the people in the train they’d call us
Gypsies, tramps and thieves
But every night we’d hop in our Audi and count the money.”
They sound a lot like bloggers.
“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.
Not all Roma are deceitful, lying beggars. They are also deceitful, lying ‘craftsmen’ peddling wildly inferior home repair services.
And every night the men would come around
and lay my mama down...
My Dad told me that he traded me to the gypsies for a three legged cat.
He said after a day, they brought me back and put a curse on him.
And the liberals in the Bay area contribute because they feel better about themselves.
In recent years, I’ve noticed many allegedly destitute or homeless standing in highway median strips, panhandling, especially at left turn lanes where the cars have to stop for the red light.
I’ve heard that many of these people are frauds.
Some make $100 a day begging??
Add it up, if they work a normal five days a week, they are getting $500 a week tax free.
I don’t know if liberals are the ones giving money. The liberals believe someone else should help the poor.
I’m sick of them all coming up to me practically anywhere, gas stations and such. One weird woman approached me at a gas station wanting me to use her credit card to pump gas into my truck. When I questioned her she told me it would help her pay her phone bill. WTH? I told her I didn’t understand what she was doing and she never mentioned me giving her cash for use of her credit card. I suspect she didn’t tell me the scheme when I was not playing her game whatever the hades it was. Freaking Weirdos out there.
Crowdfunding
Dad kept old Tripod the cat.
He was a good mouser, but then, so was I.
Talking to a friend yesterday I remarked on how many beggars there are on the streets of Manhattan and on the subway trains. Some openly brag about collecting $200/day. NYC has very high taxes and extensive social services. You would think that NYC taxpayers would figure that they had already paid for the care of the indigent, but they seem willing to add more on top, I guess. Sure conflicts with the NYC image of being hard and unsentimental, but I saw it repeatedly with my own eyes.
Back in the day, watched a woman with baby begging at a McDonalds in Burlingame.
She must have taken in at least $200 during the lunch rush alone.
Watched her walk down the street a few blocks as she was leaving, turn into a side street and drive out in a late model Mercedes Benz SL
With your reputation you could become wealthy blogging.
“Whoa. CBS just figured out that a lot of panhandlers are professionals. Film at 11.”
I figured out that they had puppet masters about 27 years ago, when, literally overnight, all of their signs instantly stated “Will work for food”.
It really isn’t that hard to figure out...if you willing to walk some pavement, or just read their signs.
I heard that someone went out and offered work to the people with will work for food signs. They had few takers.
They sound more like gypsy hillbillies.
I probably wouldn't like the target demographic much.
No. Idiots suckers in various stripes.
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