Police make example of ‘homeless’ man begging with $800 in pockets

[Liberal_in_LA]

The post describes a man, 59-year-old Franklin Jones, who reportedly begs at the intersection of Gause and Interstate 10, according to WGNO. Police can’t arrest Jones because begging isn’t a crime. But on May 21, Jones was spotted stumbling into the road, urinating on the side of the road and he allegedly stole a shopping cart, police said.

Upon his arrest, police found over $800 in his pockets.

Here’s an excerpt from the post:

We continue to offer help, but when you can make $800 in less than a week by “begging”, some people say, “Why get a real job?” We’ve found jobs for people. We’ve offered assistance by bringing some of these individuals to rehab facilities. Bottom line is, it’s up to the individual person if they want help or not. All we can do is guide them in the right direction. We can’t force people to do things…

Slidell Police does their best to address these issues by following the letter of the law and ensuring that no one’s rights are violated. There is no easy solution to this problem, and quite frankly, it is a much bigger and deeper issue than a strictly a police matter. We hope this sheds some light for our Slidell residents and hopefully answered any questions or concerns about this issue.

Some responded in support of the post, while others blasted police for publicly shaming the man.
http://wgntv.com/2015/05/27/police-make-example-of-homeless-man-begging-with-800-in-pockets/

[Recursion]

1. Grifters gotta grift

There are predatory people who will take advantage of others' sympathy; it's a fact of life. (And at least in DC, the guys who did that also made a habit of shaking down the homeless people they hid among for what little money they had, too.) Name a shitty thing people can do, and there's probably somebody who does it...

[kcr]

18. Yeah, shitty things like claim this is evidence of grifting n/t

[phil89]

34. It IS grifting.

look it up

[Joe the Revelator]

2. A 19th century Rabbi once said:

I give tzedakah to one hundred poor people on the assumption that I may find one out of a hundred who is worthy and I will have the merit of helping him. But you refrain from giving to one hundred poor people... lest one of them be unworthy. Therefore know that the average beggar who holds out his hand is presumed to need the money and you should not concern yourself with hidden matters.-Rabbi Chaim of Tzanz

Its good guidance when things like this come to light.

[DesertFlower]

3. i give with my heart. if they're hucksters

it's their bad karma -- not mine.

[Cleita]

4. $800?

You can't buy much with that. Now you know he wasn't buying booze or drugs or he wouldn't have that money. But isn't this what those useless mouths do with your hard earned money? You can't rent an apartment and maybe you can buy a motel room for a week or so. Considering what your credit card company steals from you, is this really a problem? What if the guy was saving up to improve his situation? Anybody ever think of that?

[former9thward]

5. I could buy a lot with that.

[Cleita]

11. So could I. But it wouldn't pay my upkeep, rent, utilities, food and maintenance of my car.

Also, it wouldn't pay for the insurance I need and all the above. Really? $800? They are going to steal the money from that man. At least he made it the honest way, begging. If I were down on my circumstances, and the police did that to me, I probably would steal in the future. It's much easier. If I'm going to be criminalized for being poor, at least I'll be a criminal.

[jmowreader]

6. $800 per week is $3200 per month

You could rent an apartment for that much money.

[Liberal_in_LA]

8. landlords want evidence of a continual cash flow...a job

[Cleita]

10. How do you know it's a week? He may have been saving for awhile.

I personally find it very hard to save even $100 a month and I have a steady income from SS.

[jmowreader]

37. Somewhere in the article...

it says $800 in less than a week.

[Cleita]

38. That's what the police claimed. No where did the homeless man claim that.

Even so, $800 for the effort of begging all day every day of the week is not a huge compensation.

[Javaman]

21. Obviously you have never begged for food and money. I have.

first question should be (not that it matters)is: how long it took for him to make $800 bucks?

Personal experience had me making 125 bucks on my very best day ever. The average daily take for me? About 20 - 25 bucks. Sometimes I would get nothing. A lot of the time, between 10 and 15 bucks.

walk a mile in someone else shoes before you cast dispersions.

Edit: I would beg for roughly 5 to 8 hours a day. Many times longer if I were really hungry and didn't have a dime to my name and didn't want to go to sleep yet again hungry.

[yellowcanine]

30. Assuming he made that much 4 weeks in a row.

Which is doubtful. And as unknowable as the claim that he made the $800 in a week in the first place. Appears to be an assumption on the part of the police officers and/or the reporter. I looked at several of the citations. The number was just stated in all cases with no attribution. So I am taking it with a mighty heaping of salt.

[Downwinder]

7. I am sure they will find sufficient charges and fines to

take the $800.

[Cleita]

9. No doubt. Can't let those homeless people take advantage of the advantaged. eom

[LeftyMom]

12. Maybe he was saving up for a car or a shabby little RV or something?

Would they rather he go drink up the contents of his pockets instead of holding onto that money long enough to turn it into something to improve his lot?

[Cleita]

14. I would think that is what he was doing.

There were young, white hippies back in the age of Aquarius who did beg and really didn't need it. They had places to live and crash. They weren't homeless in the way the street dwelling, shopping cart homeless are today. I'm surprised he could keep it and wasn't robbed by other homeless, but I won't pass judgement unless I know more.

[Cleita]

13. And then there is this poor pauper.

http://americasmarkets.usatoday.com/2015/05/27/jamie-dimon-blasts-lazy-shareholders/

I guess he could use that $800.

[yellowcanine]

32. Heh. That is a big glass house Jamie Dimon is tossing rocks from.....

The advisory firms, which can have sway over one-third of shareholder votes at annual meetings, cited concerns over the arbitrary nature of the payments, including Dimon’s $7.4 million cash bonus. It was Dimon’s first cash bonus since 2011 due to losses tied to a group of London traders, one of whom was dubbed the “London Whale.”

Dimon also talked about the bank’s guilty plea last week to felony charges for conspiring to manipulate currency prices, saying the bank has “doubled and tripled” its efforts to weed out “the bums and criminals.”

Note that the $7.4 million was just his BONUS. His total compensation for 2014 was $20 million.

Note also that Dimon was miffed because the approval (in a nonbinding vote) of the shareholders for his compensation package dropped from 78% to 61.4%. Oh the humanity!

[GreatGazoo]

15. They "can't arrest" him so they go through his pockets and put pictures online to deal with his

non-crime?

Truth is, since this is all outside the law and seems to be part of some kind of vendetta against this serial non-law breaker, we don't know who's cash is in that picture. In other words if they are going to work outside the law to get this guy, then there is nothing to stop them from dumping their own cash out on that table or taking cash from evidence bags and photographing it. But even if it is his money, they have no right to make the amount of cash in his pocket part of a charge (if there was one) of public urination.

They can create a new category of non-crime -- pocket crimes: "Though many have asked Jane Doe for a cigarette, she always says she is out but in her pocket we found a pack with 18 cigarettes."

"After John's friend asked to borrow $20 and he said he didn't have it, Slidell Police found more than $80 in his pockets and tried to guide him in the right direction."

[romanic]

16. I'm pretty sure

pissing on the side of the road for all to see is a crime.

[GreatGazoo]

17. yes but is the legal punishment to have the contents of your pockets photographed and put online?

How is the cash in his pocket in any way related to alleged public urination?

Are violations of the 4th Amendment a crime to you also?

The Slidell Police FB page is "unavailable" now.

[Liberal_in_LA]

27. update.. cops have taken the post down

[JHB]

19. The quote markes around "homeless" imply it's not true...

Last edited Thu May 28, 2015, 10:07 AM - Edit history (1)

...but there's nothing in the article (or the one it links to, nor the video clip) that says anything about that (and yes, I understand the OP uses them because they're in the headline of the quoted article).

In fact there's no information at all other than the guy's actions for the shopping cart and urinating in a public area, and the money.

I tend to be suspicious of "homeless guys are just faking it" stories, especially when there's an ideological (**cough**Stossel/**cough**) or PR interest involved (the latter case certainly applies here -- there are legitimate resident complaints that need to be addressed). They use an individual case to make sweeping generalizations that screw people already in bad situations.

Kudos to the TV clip hosts for noting that the situation might be more problematic than the police FB post indicated.

[Liberal_in_LA]

28. public replies to the post which has been taken down

ACLU Nationwide are being notified of this. Public 'shaming' I'm sure, is cruel and unusual punishment, especially since there was no actual crime committed in collecting money. The facts that this man is homeless, his life circumstances, has nothing to do with the crime committed.

[MindPilot]

20. Get a job?! No need, the dude is already running his own business, and it's paying pretty well.

Decent gig. The guy gets to be outside, interact with lots of different people, sets his own hours, is his own boss, runs with a very low overhead, and best of all, pays almost nothing in taxes.

How is a panhandler any different from the home improvement salesman who accosts you in Sears? (other than perhaps being considerably more honest?)

[BlueJazz]

23. What MindPilot said.

[Sunlei]

22. he was saving for rent? how do police know he made 800 in "less than a week"? did police steal cash

from him last week?

[MelungeonWoman]

24. Police steal $800 from homeless man

What else is new?

[gollygee]

26. +1

[bullwinkle428]

31. That's how I read it as well.

[gollygee]

25. He probably doesn't have a bank account

and has to keep everything on him. That doesn't mean he isn't really homeless. Did he actually make the whole $800 in one week? I wouldn't be surprised if he spends as little as he can so he doesn't starve when times are lean. A few weeks where he makes more than he needs can hold him over for a few weeks where he makes less than he needs.

[Xyzse]

35. That is what I am gettting as well.

[yellowcanine]

29. I love the people who say this is not "making an honest living."

As in this comment on the story.....

JUSTIN HOWARD HENDERSON
It’s really bad when a homeless person is making more money than the average normal person that gets up everyday and makes a honest living

How do we know it is not an "honest living?" He doesn't pay taxes on it? Okay, maybe his sign says something which isn't true. Or maybe it doesn't. Or maybe he has no sign at all. Just asks for money. We don't know whether or not he pays taxes on it. But just asking for money is not dishonest. Stealing money is.

Actually I would rather give money to some homeless guy who makes $800 a week (and we don't know that either) than help pay the salaries of most of our elected leaders who are dishonest and are stealing money and legally trading campaign cash for votes. Chris Christie made over $1800 ($95,000 per year) a week just on his unaccountable expense "allowance" from New Jersey which he did not report as income.

[Taitertots]

33. $800 is his life savings

Fuck these guys for harassing someone over petty infractions.

Why are they wasting state resources on this? If they have extra time for this, than they should fire someone.

[Lancero]

36. On the bright side...

If he can find a lawyer who'd work pro bono he could file suit against the department.

Considering how badly this case could blow up in their faces, I'd bet they'd quickly give a settlement offer. Sadly though it'll come from the taxpayers instead of out of the officers paychecks.