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Alias
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
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 Posted: Sat Aug 04, 2007 5:53 pm Post subject: Police arrest 'professional panhandler' in cathedral mugging |
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Police have arrested a suspect in the daylight mugging of a 79-year-old man inside a downtown Vancouver cathedral.
Vancouver police Const. Howard Chow said Friday that Darcy Lance Jones, 43, has been charged with one count of robbery.
Jones was arrested while panhandling about a block away from the cathedral where the robbery occurred, Chow said.
"I understand he touts himself as a professional panhandler," Chow said. "He's well-known in the area and is known to police."
On Wednesday a man described as a panhandler robbed and assaulted a man in the foyer of Holy Rosary Cathedral on Richards Street in Vancouver.
The cathedral is located a short walk from Vancouver's troubled Downtown Eastside, where many homeless people, drug addicts and mentally ill people live.
A security camera in the cathedral's foyer captured images of a bearded man snatching the wallet of the elderly victim and then throwing him to the floor.
Despite feeling sore, the victim, a retired doctor, showed up for morning mass on Friday, as he does every day.
The Downtown Business Improvement Association said Vancouverites don't do enough to discourage begging on their streets.
"We have found a way to cement them in their lifestyle out there by not providing resources to them and not taking their actions seriously by applying sanctions and consequences for their behaviour," said David Jones, the association's director of crime prevention services.
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Panhandling in Vancouver is quite bad. I think this just pushed it over the edge. |
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Alias
Joined: 24 Jan 2003
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| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 5:55 pm Post subject: Panhandling turns deadly |
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Last Thursday evening, 32-year-old Ross Hammond was strolling down Toronto's trendy Queen Street West when he and a friend were approached by four panhandlers (two men and two women) in their early 20s. According to police reports, the panhandlers were "abusive" and "aggressive." Mr. Hammond, a visitor to Toronto, refused their demands for cash and was subsequently assaulted and repeatedly stabbed. On Saturday, Mr. Hammond succumbed to his injuries and became the city's 51st murder victim this year. All four panhandlers are now in custody.
The death of Mr. Hammond is all the more tragic because the crime may well have been prevented if the City of Toronto had laws that clearly outlawed panhandlers, and directed police to keep city streets clear of anyone who harasses passers-by for money. Instead, many of Toronto's city councillors seem more anxious about panhandlers' rights and feelings than those of their victims. (Councillor Howard Moscoe, for example, has declared that "people panhandling make us uncomfortable because they remind us of our failings.") A City of Toronto document classifies panhandling as a "manifestation of poverty and need" instead of what it is -- an ugly, intimidating and sometimes violent nuisance.
Reports quoting people who know those accused of assaulting Mr. Hammond suggest neither poverty nor need. "They're just travelling kids in town to make money and move on" said one. Another reported: "We had all eaten very well that night ? we all had money, so it wasn't like we were desperate."
The case of Mr. Hammond is unusual in that it ended with a fatality. But violence among panhandlers is hardly unknown. Earlier this year, a woman named Nivine Shenouda told a committee of Toronto councillors that when she asked a panhandler to leave the Tim Hortons donut shop she owns, the man slapped her across the face and cut her. She says her staff "don't want to approach [panhandlers] at all anymore."
This is not a problem confined to Toronto. Vancouver is also besieged by panhandlers. The city's mayor speaks of showing "sensitivity and progressiveness" toward beggars -- rather than making streets safer for the law-abiding folks they victimize. The price for such myopia is paid by people such as Peter Collins, the 79-year-old Vancouverite who, in early-August, was assaulted by a professional panhandler inside a Catholic cathedral after the panhandler decided he wanted more than the $5 Mr. Collins had offered him.
It is also paid by the people who work in Vancouver's tourism industry. Convention contracts for hotels, some worth as much as $500,000, have been lost -- according to the Downtown Vancouver Business Improvement Association -- because visitors don't believe Vancouver streets are safe. It's hard to blame folks for staying away: People won't visit a city if they are confronted by an army of deadbeats thrusting their hands out for coins.
Permissive attitudes to panhandling create the false conceit that beggars have the right to our money. When they don't get that money, they sometimes lash out -- in the case of Mr. Hammond, fatally. His death is a wake-up call to city administrators: Stop mouthing class-struggle platitudes about poverty, and start making our streets safe.
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Tony_Balony
Joined: 12 Apr 2007
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| Posted: Tue Aug 14, 2007 7:29 pm Post subject: |
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There is a difference between panhandlers and the homeless. To be honest, the only people I've ever wanted to murder were panhandlers.
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Homeless man shot to death
Ohio social workers see increase in attacks against needy people
By Lisa Cornwell Associated Press
Published on Thursday, Aug 09, 2007
CINCINNATI: A panhandler who asked for 25 cents was shot and killed in a confrontation that homeless advocates say is part of a wider trend of attacks on the homeless nationwide.
However, the attorney for the woman charged in the shooting denies that homelessness was an issue in the case.
Geraldine Beasley, 62, was charged with murder and bond was set at $500,000 Wednesday in the death of Donald Francis, 44, who police believe was homeless. Police said Francis had been standing outside a gas station late Monday asking people for money.
Police said Beasley had complained about the panhandler to someone else; when he approached her to ask for 25 cents, she pulled out a gun and shot him. Francis died at the scene.
''I view this as a tragedy,'' said Georgine Getty, executive director of the Greater Cincinnati Coalition for the Homeless. ''I think that in our society, we have so much fear and misunderstanding of homelessness and homeless people that it can lead to extreme violence.''
Beasley's attorney, Massimino Ionna, said Wednesday that there have been some allegations of mental illness involving his client, but he was still trying to verify them.
Ionna said it was too early to comment on a possible plea because the case has not yet gone to a grand jury.
''I can say that this person (Beasley) is someone who generally was a friend to the homeless,'' Ionna said. ''We would deny allegations that this had anything to do with homelessness.''
A message seeking comment was left at the Hamilton County prosecutor's office Wednesday.
Getty said that while there were no confirmed attacks on homeless people last year in Cincinnati, a report by the National Coalition for the Homeless showed 142 reported attacks on the homeless nationwide in 2006 compared with 86 in 2005. Those attacks included five rapes, six people set on fire and 20 murders.
Homeless advocates in Cleveland say there have been increasing attacks on the homeless in Northeast Ohio. There have been at least six attacks including one killing in Cleveland since February and two attacks in Akron, said Brian Davis, executive director of the Northeast Ohio Coalition for the Homeless. There were only two incidents involving hate crimes against the homeless reported to police in Ohio in 2006, Davis said.
Homeless advocates consider a crime against a homeless person a hate crime when it is perpetrated because the victim is homeless or is engaged in activities such as panhandling that are often associated with homelessness, said Getty, adding that only a small portion of the homeless population engages in panhandling.
Cincinnati and many other cities have tried to limit panhandling with ordinances restricting when and where people can panhandle on city streets.
''These laws tend to dehumanize the homeless population and reinforce the idea that anything can be done to the homeless because they don't count,'' Getty said.
Hamilton County Commissioner Pat DeWine, who supported the city's restrictions on panhandlers when he was on the City Council, said he thinks there is a place for ordinances that prevent aggressive panhandling. |
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