Police: Oregon panhandlers raking in the green

[superconnected]

Source: Associated Press

COOS BAY, Ore. - A police survey says panhandlers outside Wal-Mart in Coos Bay can make $300 a day. Inside, it takes a clerk a week to make that much.

Police say people who have a problem with that needn't look to the law - asking for money is considered protected free speech.

Coos Bay authorities say most panhandlers are not criminals.

Coos Bay Police Captain Rodger Craddock says most have lived in the city a long time and they actually have homes. Craddock says, "This is just their chosen profession."


Read more: http://www.komotv.com/news/local/15157611.html

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I never knew how much panhandlers made so I'm surprised. I wonder if that's the average for anywhere. In may area the panhandlers really do strike me as very poor though.

[depakid]

1. I'd be very suspicious of anything I heard on local "news"

They simply repeat whatever anyone tells them, without much (if any) follow-up or independent verification.

If it creates a stir- all the better.

Ask someone who's spent any time in Coos Bay what they think of the "story."

My guess is, you'll get a rousing laugh....

[mahatmakanejeeves]

4. Coos Bay

I've driven through Coos Bay, and I have a hard time believing this. Coos Bay is the setting for Ken Kesey's Sometimes a Great Notion.

[Oregone]

16. No, Newport/Lincoln City/Maybe Waldport is (from Wakonda beach)

Not Coos Bay. Its a Lincoln County based movie.

[montanto]

25. Part of the movie was filmed in Toledo Oregon,

7 miles inland from Newport. I lived in that hole.

[mahatmakanejeeves]

30. Oh, really?

I didn't know. Now, I don't mean where it was filmed. All this time I thought the town in the book was based on Coos Bay. I've been down the entire coast, from Astoria to Crescent City. Wow, what a drive that is.

Newport, huh. I can handle that. I love those bridges.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

27. I think it's Florence, personally.

More the rural areas along the Siuslaw corridor.

[HiFructosePronSyrup]

28. I think they get more money from bottle and can collection.

There's a $0.05 refund law in oregon.

[thunder rising]

2. Fucking Police, why talk, just go shake the panhandlers down like they have always done

[Earth_First]

3. I'm calling bullsh*t. n/t

[Echo In Light]

20. Indeed. Bullshit & shenanigans

[xchrom]

5. even at 300 a day -- i wouldn't trade places with

a panhandler.

not that i believe this characterization is any more accurate than say ''WELFARE QUEEN''.

[Zorra]

6. Kind of like the "police seized two lbs.of marijuana valued at $100,000"

BS you always hear about on the news?

[catrose]

7. I don't live in Oregon

But a local minister went and stood on a street corner for a day, to give himself more compassion for those that do it all the time. He made $9.

And the police are saying multiple people outside of WAL-MART make $300/day? Er...could I examine their accounting methods?

[NashVegas]

8. Pandhandling Is Self-Employment

The difference between a smart panhandler and a retailer who sells you something you don't need is that the panhandler, if they are very good at what they do, can make you walk away feeling like you've done something productive.

I once gave to the United Negro Pizza Fund and was happy to. The buzz from the laughter was good for at least five minutes. Pepsi never gave me that.

Many professional entertainers hone their craft by panhandling.

[Master Payne]

18. It's Called Busking Not Panhandling

A professional entertainer on the street is called a Busker or Street Performer. They are working for their living by providing a service usually in the form of some sort of entertainment such as music, magic or juggling.

A Panhandler simply asks for money. Usually just by standing there with a cup and a cardboard sign.

To call a Busker a Panhandler is considered an insult to the age old tradition of Street Performing.

Having Busked in my youth I could see where a good pitch and a great line could easily net $300.00 a day. Probably not in Coos Bay, but in one of the bigger metropolitan areas.

[Runcible Spoon]

19. good point. When I lived in Boulder, CO there was a street performer,

there was a woman who had had her legs and arms amputated and she played a mini piano in the streets with her tongue and face; it was amazing to watch her perform. According to a local news story she was busted a few years later for making over $35,000/year and not paying taxes on it :eyes:

Yeah bust the amputee but let the corporations get off on everything :grr:

[happyslug]

31. Busker is a British term, in the US "Street performer" is used instead

There are MANY differences between American English and English English, this is just one of many.

For more see:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Busker

It is illegal in many, if no most, American Cities (My home town of Pittsburgh is one, and it was and is enforced).

[dysfunctional press]

34. i think that pan-handling money should be considered capital gains...

it would save those guys A BUNDLE at tax time.

[sarcasmo]

9. Gee, next they will want to tax panhandlers. Making being homeless sound like a good thing.

[all.of.me]

10. I know some panhandlers.

They bring in $400/day at a busy intersection in a small town. Some are mentally ill, some are alcoholics, some are lazy young adults who don't want to work, some actually have had car problems.

I have spare-changed my way across the country, legitimately, since our car had broken down and eaten up our gas money. Whether or not you have a real story, people give a buck here and a buck there. It adds up.

[Cronus Protagonist]

32. I know one who takes his kids with him

So he doesn't have to work or for extra money. He has the kids sit in the car while he asks people for gas. If he gets a full tank of gas, he asks for food money, if he gets money he keeps on going until he gets what he wants while the children sit in the car.

I don't give money to anyone any more because of people like him.

[dysfunctional press]

36. "They bring in $400/day at a busy intersection in a small town."

if it's a small town- how many days can they do $400/day business before people get tired of seeing the same guy all the time asking for money? when i lived in chicago, i got very used to seeing the same people in the same places for weeks at at time. so did everyone else in the neighborhood.

[MissB]

11. Coos Bay is not exactly Portland.

Lovely little slice of the coast, but really not much to speak of economically.

[pattmarty]

12. Bush can handle doing that when he leaves office.

[momster]

13. He'll Be The Charlie Brown

of Panhandlers. "What? Another rock?"

[carincross]

14. Read Sherlock Holmes' "The Man with the Twisted Lip"

"The Man with the Twisted Lip" is the case of a respectable business man who makes a very successful living by disguising himself as a beggar. He is unmasked when he is thrown into jail and his wife thinks that he has been killed.

[here_is_to_hope]

15. I live in Coos Bay...

...and there is no way those two guys pull in that kind of cash!
Its the same two every day, one had a sling on his arm for a time, the other had a knee brace most of last year.
This is bs for two reasons...
One, Coos Bay isnt very "giving", the local food bank is starving for donations. I cant see any locals or tourists giving up money at the entrance to sprawlmart. We have no economy to speak of.
Two, if they are making 300.00 a day, why wouldnt they take a day off or better yet, move?

BTW, this report is out of Seattle, 400 miles away and a whole 'nother state.

[Oregone]

17. I agree, it doesn't add up.

The only place itd be likely is outside the casino, but most people leave empty handed (like most casinos).

[bean fidhleir]

24. "there is no way those two guys pull in that kind of cash!"

For sure the various experiments that have been made suggest the average take is (iirc) about 50c/hr. It's way far below any subsistence level.

[montanto]

26. I used to live in Coos Bay, went to H.S. there,

and I return every year to visit family. Coos Bay is very conservative, not giving as you say, and frowns on indolence. I can't imagine it. If I can make $300.00 a day begging, I'm moving back!

[L. Coyote]

21. Source?

[Deja Q]

22. So are oil company executives; raking it in.

:shrug:

[MadHound]

23. Please note the presence of a key weasel word: "can"

Hell, I "can" make a few million dollars this week, but it isn't likely given the long odds on the lottery. I "can" get some hot model to be my wife, but it isn't likely. I "can" do many things, but most aren't likely going to happen for various reasons or another.

This is an old propaganda technique designed to fool the idiots and uneducated. Hell, I'd be willing to bet that most days the panhandlers make less than a tenth of the $300 they "can" make.

[noel adamson]

29. Coos Bay is an arm pit and this is typical of the "police" in this neck of the woods.

I used to live outside of Coos Bay and now live in Eureka, California just down the coast. The mentality of the "Good ol' boys" network here is that of Mississippi if Martin Luther King never happened. Here in Eureka police have murdered a number of people in the last year or two and have gotten nothing but raises. Un armed people who were homeless, mentally disabled or juvenile delinquents not likely to hurt them.

Drug production in this area, on the other hand, gets a lot of protection and people make a hell of a lot more than 300 bucks a day in that profession.

They never stop making excuses for abusing poor people. This a "welfare queen riding in a limousine" redo. Murdering bastards.

Begging is protected and pan handlers have as much right to beg as crooked corporate "charities".

[dysfunctional press]

33. and A LOT of them double-dip by marrying welfare queens...

and many of them were forced to pan-handle when the death tax claimed the family farm.

but luckily for them- money from pan-handling is considered capital gains- so their tax rate will be lower than if they were classified as wages.

[The Straight Story]

35. I'd rather give my money to panhandlers than to bush for his war

I don't care if they drink or smoke with it, better than giving it to bush to kill people in Iraq :)