Reply #5: In my town it depends on levels of aggressiveness. Aggressive, violent panhandlers...

[bridgit]

Will end up doing a 72 or sent down the road, simpler aggressions will be sent down the sidewalk. If a civil panhandler is working, maybe someone with a story to tell; people deal in relation to the ways they themselves deal. But I also live in a town where homeless women pull down their sweatpants, squat and pee on the sidewalk right in front of Starbucks on the open-air K St mall. There was a black guy run out of a little family owned & operated Concina Mexican restaurant the other day (we know the family they're hard working people) cause he just walked in at lunch time and was going from booth to booth of people with food on their forks belligerently demanding dollars cause no one asks for spare change anymore - he was run down the road, when I came out with our to-go order my husband has watched him demanding money of others at the bus bench

I don't mean for this reply to be quite so long, just some recent experiences since you've asked - but up in Placerville, a elderly scruffy homeless mute walked up to my husband and just sort of stood in front of him saying no words. My husband smiled and looked back into his eyes. Then the man pulled from his pocket a little slip of paper on which had been printed his situation. My husband read it very carefully, never asked if he was a mute as represented; just reached into his pocket and pulled out the change and handed it to him - it turned out to be over $5 cause my husband had a couple Sacajawea' in there, carries them around with him I should say; which he nearly considers priceless. Wordless, the old man saluted my husband and he saluted back