This morning I ran into the Center City Commission’s safety director, who is in charge of the Downtown safety patrol. One of the patrol’s major tasks is thwarting aggressive panhandling. The patrol was originally scheduled to run as a trial program from April 1 to June 30.
The safety director told me that when the patrol has run bums off this past week, the bums have said, “You go ahead and run us off. We know that you won’t be here anymore after June 30 and we’re going to go right back to doing what we were doing before.”
So there should be an influx of bums into the Downtown area ready to harass people and make some money. Boy will they be surprised when they find out that the patrol has been renewed for another 12 months. They may have been able to survive for a few months on their reduced panhandling revenue, but will they really be able to last for another year?
Bye bye bums! It may be time for some of these MFers to turn to the thing they fear the most: employment.