This is not my first Darwinian rant against the bums of the New World Order [See The Case for the Panhandler Genocide], and it is not my last. These creatures have been becoming more virulent and better organized, and are now the enemy in an undeclared culture war in our cities. Somehow the entitlement mentality cultivated by our society since my birth in the early 1960s [Perhaps I am the Antichrist like that hillbilly preacher said?] has finally produced a generation of aggressively violent bums.

In the past they only became dangerous when they were about to die from exposure. Now they organize as a matter of course, and even have contingency plans for dealing with the cops. Panhandler Nation will be my ongoing chronicle of their victories and defeats. As indicated by the subtitle above, I do not recognize their humanity. I must treat them as human under the laws enforced by my sniveling masters. But I cannot be forced to regard them as spiritually, ethically, or morally human. I remain free in mind at least.

It is winter; time for beggars to band together into packs and go on the offensive. I remember one winter night when it was 18 below in the late 1990s. I got off the #19 bus downtown at around 11:00 PM. Three bums were huddled over the steam grates trying to keep warm. One, an old bent one, looked up at me, walking by in my overcoat, and croaked, “Coat, coat!”

He walked toward me with arms outstretched, as if he were a zombie wanting to feast on my brains. His two friends joined him, limping and shuffling after me, as I picked up my pace and left them behind. I sincerely hope they died of exposure on that wintry night. If they did—they must surely be in the ground by now, fifteen years on—they have certainly been replaced by other noxious beings, now populating our gutters with fresher DNA.

I recall the bum stompings of that time, how teenagers were stomping these guys out and crippling them for fun. I thought that was disgusting, but was glad that more bums had been crippled. These are the fiends that will pounce on me ghoul-like if I ever fall ill or injured on the winter streets of Baltimore. Whether they are the sore-covered white heroin addicts or the ashen-hued black alcohol-zombies, they are the jackals of the urban night, ready to strip the very clothes from your back. I hope more of them freeze on this 15-degree January day, and into what promises to be an even colder night.

Oh, I have a request: if any Harm City reader ever encounters a Latino or Asian panhandler, please fill us in using the comment section below. So far, according to my experience, it seems to be a white and black thing.

Martha is a 65-year-old grandmother. She has lived in the same neighborhood for her entire life. About 15-years ago the crack and heroin epidemic washed over her neighborhood. So, as of 1998, she could no longer walk to the store. Since then she has driven the five blocks to her local market. Unfortunately, since dealers have recently evolved to using cars to supply their clients, as opposed to working corners ‘open air’ style, once she gets to the local market, it is no longer safe to get out of the car. She shops with her adult son, a self-described vigilante, who has attacked street people before. She pulls up in the loading zone and he goes into shop, unafraid of the gathering scum, demanding cigarettes and cash.

Martha will roll down her window and give money to harmless seeming bums, dispensing perhaps $50 per a year in this manner, despite her son’s disapproval. She claims to have good instincts, and has noted that more and more of these panhandlers seem dangerous or ‘no good’ and has been declining to roll down her window and dispense money.

The reason for this is that drug dealers who work from cars use busy retail lots to ply their trade to obscure their business. I have interviewed the owner of this market, who has informed me that the storefront and parking lot are a ‘free-fire zone’ as far as they are concerned. This retailer will only commit to protecting customers when they are inside the store, out of fear that any attempt to protect customers on the store front or lot will be an admission of liability and open them up to law suits. They will call the police, but discourage employees from offering themselves as witnesses.

The two local cops I have interviewed about this have told me that they are loath to enforce misdemeanors on the property of any business owner with this attitude, and have specifically pointed out this retailer as a problem location because of their encouragement of illegal cabbies, or ‘hacks’.

Last week Martha was waiting for her son to come out of the store when an apparently insane panhandler approached her with a gas can. She was nice to him. After hassling her for a while, and threatening her with the nozzle of the gas can, he went on his way. Then she noticed that he had an 80-year-old woman pinned in her car. Martha called the store, and got an assurance that they would call the cops. She then rolled down her window and asked the creep to leave the old lady alone. The creep disappeared as his crew swooped in to take over the operation.

You see, these lots are now worked by organized crews—against whom no lone legitimate old-style bum stands a chance of holding his territory—who divide labor between the panhandler, the mouth, and the muscle. Gascan was working with 300-pound Junky Joe with his 120-pound brindle attack dog; a 350-pound ‘side-kick’, and a crack ho. A crew like this works together with lookouts and muscle and relief mouth to score $40. When they score their $40 the car-mobile dealer will cruise in and sell them their four hits of whatever they are using to kill themselves.

The crack ho began a confrontation with Martha, which got ugly, and drew Martha out into an argument; where, she would have just avoided a confrontation with one of the men. The entire point was to have two women arguing when the cops rolled up so that Gascan would be all but forgotten, already working the next lot, and Junky Joe just an innocent witness. The cops only buy so much of this bullshit, but it muddies the waters enough to make sure there is no citation or arrest.

Junky Joe had already intimidated the parcel pickup clerk into not giving a statement. The security guard hid inside and peeked out the window from under the banana sign. Martha had asked the store to call the cops so that her son would not get arrested for fighting Junky Joe and his cohorts. Again, you see the separation of job responsibilities, common to a criminal organization, even of the lowest order. If Junky Joe had to fight Martha’s son he had a dog and an accomplice to stack the odds, and his crack ho witness to even the odds in court.

The cops just took statements and made sure Martha got off the lot. She does not know if they made Junky Joe leave.

This story is second-hand and out-of-state but comes from a good source. The tale is set in the small brownstone ghetto city of Newburgh in New York, not far from Westpoint in the Hudson Valley, sprawling around a state prison. This formally middle class city is now inhabited by many of the loved-ones and offspring of the prison inmates.

A contractor, who has his own small construction business stopped into a neighborhood market to get cigarettes and refreshments. When he stepped away from the counter a young teenager asked him for a cigarette. Of course, this is never about the cigarette!

The man responded that he did not have a cigarette.

The teen became combative, claiming to have seen the man purchase cigarettes, and demanding one.

The man threatened the teen.

The teen deployed a hatchet!

The man told the teen that he would take the hatchet and forcibly place it in a specific bodily cavity.

The teen’s mother appeared and threatened the man.

The man, ‘a rough dude’, threatened them both.

The mother dashed upstairs to her apartment as the teen opened up his cell phone and called in the troops.

The store owner told the man that he best leave, because the kid was well-connected in the area.

The mother came downstairs with a bowl of bleach and threw it at the man’s face. The contractor had fortunately pulled away in time to save his eyes, but not his coat, which was ruined.

The man went out to his truck, got in, and pulled off. As he was pulling off an armed gang of mixed-age males was converging on the store.

This is a bare-bones second-hand account, but it is very recent, from just last week, and illustrates well why Martha was approached by a panhandler who had such heavy backup. This is a war, if of the lowest order, and the panhandlers are winning. If you are not a bum, and live in a mid-sized East Cast city, you are living in occupied territory, behind enemy lines.

Whether you are Grandma Martha or ‘a rough dude’, be careful.

If you are Grandma, look out.

The first indication that you are being targeted for crime is that you are approached by a man that you do not know. They are always criminals and are always no good.

Secondly, our society is now so corrupt, that youth is not a good indicator of criminal capacity. All of those criminal youths from the 70s, 80s and 90s did not—unfortunately—get killed. Most of them just got older and uglier, not any better. Below is an excellent example from this past Sunday the 20th of January 2013.

One Sunday a month I spend with my mother in her suburban enclave. This past Sunday we went for a walk before the game came on TV. She pointed out a group of teenagers out clowning around and said that she was worried about there being so many in the area. I assured her that they were all addicted to alcohol and numerous illegal drugs, which they could easily afford thanks to their parents’ affluence, and should not be much of a threat. They just want to get high and goof off. As we discussed this two men in their late twenties or early thirties approached us. I stepped behind her so that they could pass. They kept coming two abreast and she stepped off the sidewalk into the mud!

My mother is over 70 and we now have upper class adult men who think she should step aside for them, and she is fine with that, because we are all supposedly one gender now. I told her that it was unacceptable and she just did not get it, and I am sure, would have been horrified to know what I was thinking. You see, she does have a sense that her benighted suburban paradise is going bad. She is just looking in the place that the newspapers have told her to look for trouble. [Junky Joe and his crew, and the mother of Hatchet Boy, were all in their 30s, and those events generated no arrests, will never become factors in the law-enforcement database, or the world as seen through newspapers and news programs.] The surest sign that you are living in a predatory culture is incivility to the elderly and the weak.

That piece-of-gay-ass that thought it was fine for an old lady to walk in the mud so he could prance along in his slippers is probably not a criminal. But, if one of those teens that she pointed out were to give her trouble, I guarantee you that that sissy in his bedroom slippers, and his boy-toy that sashayed beside him, would stand idly by. In a civil society it would have been legal and even commendable for me to whip both of those queers for disrespecting my mother. But in our world, it would be a crime, so I did not ruin her game-day with the spectacle of her son, a grandfather himself, committing a crime.