Commentary: Panhandling or shakedown?

CHICAGO, Sept. 29 (UPI) -- In city after city, residents have had it with overly aggressive panhandlers.

While it's not against the law to ask someone for a handout, if a person walking on the street is insulted, verbally abused, shouted at, threatened, touched, followed or their path is blocked, it becomes intimidation.

It may not be strong-arm robbery, but if an aggressive panhandler has ever attempted a shakedown with you, well, it's not a pleasant exchange.

Toughen up, you might say. Well, not everyone wants to live in pre-Giuliani New York, where street begging in the 1970s was elevated to a frighteningly high art by teams of Fagin-like panhandlers.

During the Vietnam War, a muscular double amputee used to panhandle on the subway in his wheelchair. He was an imposing man who wore military fatigues, dark wraparound sunglasses and a beret.

He never asked for anything. I don't remember him saying a word. He would silently burn into your psyche appearing from a connecting car and slam a deep metal food container half filled with change on the side of his chair.

Bang, bang, bang, and he had the attention of every rider.

A companion would push him slowly down the aisle of the rocking train and the change and dollars would fall. The man never made eye contact, never told his story and never smiled.

Hardened New Yorkers who were familiar with the routine would watch shocked passengers reach for their wallets.

It was uncivil behavior. Scary. Today, I'm sure it would be illegal.

The funniest panhandler I ever saw was in midtown Manhattan. He stood on a cold winter street holding a handwritten cardboard sign with both hands. It read: "Musician."

He smiled, made eye contact and gazed down at his sign, moving his fingers like he was playing a saxophone. Person after person handed him a dollar as he bopped his head and grooved.

Fortunately most panhandlers take a non-aggressive approach. But the days of barefoot hippies asking for "spare change" are long over. Some panhandlers don't bother to get up. They reach for a handout with an outstretched hand or drink cup.

A few are clean and well dressed, others so disheveled they must be mentally ill. I once chased a longhaired man who was walking in a downtown gutter to give him money and asked him to please get a hot breakfast. The bedraggled, near-toothless specter looked like a character from a Charles Dickens novel.

The problem many people face is compassion burnout. Commuters may feel sorry for the homeless but tire of seeing the same panhandlers day after day.

"It's getting worse," said Chicago Alderman Burton Natarus, who proposed a crackdown on aggressive panhandling. "Along Michigan Avenue and Rush Street, there are people harassing tourists, asking them for money. They chase them and badger them all the way down the street. That's called aggressive panhandling."

The Chicago City Council took action Wednesday passing an ordinance to fine aggressive panhandlers $50 for a first or second offense within one year and $100 for multiple offenses.

The law, similar to an ordinance passed in Indianapolis, creates no-panhandling zones at lines outside bars and restaurants, at sidewalk cafes, gas stations, bus shelters, bus stops, inside public transportation vehicles and stations, in parked or stopped vehicles on public streets and alleys and within 10 feet of a currency exchange or automatic teller machine where people have to get out their wallets.

Panhandling in groups would be illegal.

"It does not interfere in any way with anybody asking for any money or solicitation of funds," Natarus said. "But what this does is it puts a lid on aggressive behavior."

The law replaced a panhandling ordinance revoked in March 2002 because of constitutional questions raised in a civil-rights lawsuit filed on behalf of four panhandlers who were ticketed or arrested.

Advocates for the homeless said the new ordinance is not needed because current laws on the books cover abusive behavior. They say the law will just move the problem to less gentrified or less affluent areas of the city.

"It's too abstract and it's certainly not necessary," Ed Shurna, executive director of the Chicago Coalition for the Homeless, told WFLD-TV. "And my question really is, are people uncomfortable because there's homeless people asking for money."

Shurna says people are on the street because housing is too expensive or there are not enough jobs.

Chicago, like other major U.S. cities, has thousands of homeless.

South Side Alderman Freddrenna Lyle worries police will use the law to indiscriminately target an undesirable population and literally sweep them out of view. She says struggling people should not be targets just because they're out of work or look poor.

Police Superintendent Phillip Cline promises his officers will receive special training.

Nearly 36 million people fell below the official poverty threshold last year, an increase of 1.3 million people.

Safety may be a concern in some places, but cities from the nation's capital to San Francisco are grappling with quality-of-life issues.

The Nashville Downtown Partnership, a non-profit improvement association, proposed barring panhandlers from the business district. The plan would ban aggressive panhandling everywhere in the city and all panhandling after dark. Street musicians would be exempted.

A spokeswoman for the American Civil Liberties Union told the Tennessean that anti-panhandling laws must be narrowly written and uniformly enforced to be legal and that the proposed ordinance cannot just drive poor people from downtown.

The director of a homeless-advocacy group in Colorado asked police to enforce a ban on aggressive panhandling and break up transient communities as they pop up.

"If we're going to do this five-year plan, we're going to need some help," Bob Holmes of Homeward Pike Peak told the Colorado Springs Gazette. "We need to have tougher ordinances. We need to enforce the ordinances that we have."

Many university towns like Colorado Springs, Colo.; Evanston, Ill.; and Asheville, N.C., reached compassion burnout before big cities and moved to stop aggressive panhandling. Evanston asked residents and students at Northwestern University not to give panhandlers money but to direct them to service-agency employees who would take them to shelters and get them off the street.

Evanston ceased to be "a great place for the homeless." Aggressive panhandlers, especially those with alcohol and substance-abuse problems, didn't like getting a flier with directions to a soup kitchen or medical clinic instead of a handout and went elsewhere.

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