Please, I need to know some good news. I know it differs in every area but I don’t know the city (was in Los Angeles county). Do they feed them at least?
Who’s “they”? And whatever answer may exist depends on where on Earth you are. I think you meant a specific but unknown city in Los Angeles county but I can’t be sure.
As a general rule:
Cops ignore them unless they get too aggressive in pushing for donations or start committing crimes. Some charities feed some of them some times. Some jerks sometimes attack some of them them for sport. Other than the above they’re ignored by everyone else all the rest of the time.
Does that qualify as good or bad news?
In my experience reading about how Seattle has handled it over the years, and from knowing a few people who worked in social services there (IOW, I am not any kind of expert), it varies HUGELY from time to time and place to place. Local politicians occasionally get in a lather about panhandling and either demand that ordinances be enforced strictly, or that new harsher ordinances be passed. The rest of the time, what happens is based largely on what’s available. Few people really want to pop everyone asking for spare change in jail.
If the local social services folks of various sorts are not having a budget crisis, many panhandlers get delivered to one of the following: a day center, an overnight shelter, a not-jail but more-or-less drunk tank, a substance abuse clinic, a mental health place, an at-risk teen place, some other office where they can sign up for a place in a shelter or get other services, etc. Some services have vans and go around picking panhandlers up to take them someplace to get help, especially if the weather is expected to be dangerous. Some police officers will deliver mild offenders to the above services. Under most circumstances, even when it’s illegal to panhandle and the local mayor or city council has a hardon for Addressing This Serious Problem Expediently, few actual arrests are made, and almost always just for the most chronic or aggressive offenders.
If budgets are bad and no one is agitating, many anti-panhandling ordinances get ignored until people start calling the police to complain, and then you get spot clean-ups, which often just get the panhandlers to move to a different neighborhood.
In my situation, it was an aggressive panhandler. He was following us. As we left in our car, a cop car pulled up and 2 cops were seen to be talking to him. I’m just hoping they feed him or something.
On re-read, it sounds like you had a specific incident in mind. If you saw someone get taken away by the police, that person may or may not end up in jail, due mostly to details you wouldn’t have been able to observe from a distance, like whether this person was a repeat offender or had some other kind of history the cops remembered. Cops can and do sometimes deliver people to non-government services. Or they may have taken the person in to their station and talked with him or her, perhaps hoping to talk up a voluntary commitment to an appropriate service, then released him or her. Or it might have been jail.
Ah. In that case, they might have offered food or offered to take the guy to a soup kitchen or whatever, or not – and the guy might have accepted or not. Unfortunately a lot of people who could use help, especially food, won’t take it, for a wide range of reasons, mostly related to mental illness and substance abuse.
ETA: And if the guy was being aggressive, try to stop worrying. He probably would have been taken down by the police eventually anyway, even if panhandling were legal – because harrassment is not, and letting aggressive panhandling pass is a good way to foster the more retarded kinds of strict anti-panhandling sentiment that even the cops hate enforcing.
Feed him … what? Snacks they had in their lunch bags? Possible, but those bags would be empty after 3 or 4 such incidents. AFAIK, Purina doesn’t make sacks of HoboChow, that the police can carry in the trunk and dish out. I’d bet anything a police office won’t give a panhandler cash, that’s … that’s … so the opposite of enforcing anti-panhandler ordinances, I’m confused as to what that could possibly mean. I suppose dirty cops take bribes from drug dealers, and that’s a serious violation, but really any pandering to the aggressive homeless is just so the opposite of a good idea, I don’t see how a cop would do that, no matter how kind hearted. 'Tis he season and all, but useful would be volunteering at a shelter.
They may have arrested him, if he was too aggressive, or if they’d spoke to him before. They may have suggested a shelter. Or simply told him to get lost and be aggressive elsewhere. Maybe they even asked him, “What’s the problem, sir? Is that YogSosoth bothering you?” as another possibility.
Why would the cops feed him?
Here’s the deal - panhandlers that are actually homeless know full well where the nearest soup kitchen, food pantry and shelter are. They also know which organizations offer assistance, where mental health facilities are, and where they can go to enter a housing program should they qualify (which usually means “being sober”, or at the very least “willing to enter rehab”).
I would qualify that – I believe there are many homeless or, um, home-challenged panhandlers who don’t know what help is out there. What’s available changes much faster than you might think, and if you’re homeless you don’t get the newsletter on who’s just added thirty beds or who had to shut down due to NIMBY complaints, or who finally figured out who was peeing on everyone’s bedrolls and kicked him out. Also, some of the homeless population churns. I gather that homeless teens in particular aren’t totally homeless consistently – they may have an uncle who can let them crash but only if his wife is sober, or a buddy but only if he managed the rent this month, or a list of conditional places like that. Long-term homeless people often do know the system and how to play it, of course – if you’re homeless long term, almost by definition you’ve got something going on affecting your decision-making.
Ok, here was the situation and why I am concerned
This was like the 3rd panhandler I saw in a week. Despite what some of you may feel, let’s not make this into a “You shouldn’t give money to them” topic, ok? I usually don’t see them but this week was just weird I guess
The first simply stood with a sign at a left turn signal. I had my money to give out to him, but I was too far in the back. He didn’t see me. When the light turned green, I didn’t stop to hand him the money and I felt bad
The second one was at the curb with a sign. By the time I got my money out, he had walked past us to the cars behind us and didn’t see me as I waved the cash outside the window
This last guy I didn’t even see until my friend pointed him out to us. We were eating at the outside patio of a burger place and when we left, this guy came up to us. He wasn’t like the first two. He was older, had no teeth, no sign, and simply move his hand to his open mouth in a gesture of eating and looked at us. My friends, who are against panhandling, said they had nothing and kind of just walked away to our car. One of them said he was hanging around almost for the whole duration of our meal.
As we got into the car, he kept following us, even until we got inside. He just looked really sad and hungry, and just kept making that gesture. I had my hand in my wallet and was pulling out some cash but my friends told me not to. As we were driving away, we saw the cops pull up to him and start talking to him.
It was a combination of many things that made me feel bad. First, that I had missed 3 opportunities that week. 2nd, that he looked so much worse than the other two. And third, that I kind of let peer pressure prevent me from doing what I believe was a good thing.
I get annoyed at panhandlers too, but in the end, I think what a small inconvenience for us might be a meal and a night where they don’t go hungry for them. So I was hoping people would tell me at least that the cops would feed him or something, or get him some help, instead of yelling at him and telling him to quit it
Well, chances are very good that you can both feel better and do external good by taking this guilt you’re feeling and let it motivate you to do something now. Take five minutes to Google homeless services in that area. I’ll bet you can find one that takes online donations. Sounds like the fella might have stood to benefit from mental health or substance abuse services, so I’d start there, if not old-fashioned soup kitchens. If you want to make your money go farther, do a bit of research on the organization you choose to make sure it has a good record and doesn’t spend too big a chunk on administration. No judgement on panhandling in general or on this specific guy is necessary – you’d just make a non-panhandled donation in honor of the man.
You set the ground rules, but your friends are right. Giving money to panhandlers isn’t helpful.
There are services available which not only can offer a meal and a cot for the night, but can get the homeless in touch with social service programs that can provide more long lasting help. My guess is the cops told him he couldn’t work the corner and offered him a ride to a nearby shelter. They’re not going to arrest him unless he’s violent.