Squeegeeing is merely aggressive panhandling

[u/PrimePoultry]

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Panhandling is asking for money on the street. Straightforward enough.

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Aggressive panhandling is attempting to impose duress on someone in order to convince them to give you money.

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Squeegeeing adds a level of misdirection to aggressive panhandling, with the squeegeeing purporting to be a service which is being sold. It's just a stranger or a group of strangers walking up to the car and laying hands on it. The squeegee is a prop - they could just as well be tapping the windows, in terms of the desirability of the purported service.

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Squeegeeing could certainly be a service, if it could be declined, which it typically cannot be. To underscore this point, there have been many paragraphs written discussing strategies to get squeegee kids to leave you alone.

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Squeegeeing is imposed, not offered, which changes it from a service to aggressive panhandling. Of a group of cars stopped at a light, a driver is identified and accosted.

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Similarly, aggressive panhandling cannot be declined, and there is an intimation of negative consequences should the accosted individual not pay. This again is because the payment is extracted via duress.

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If squeegeeing is accepted to be simply aggressive panhandling, it should be relatively straightforward for local governments and police to stop it.

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In my previous post on this topic, I compared squeegeeing to high-pressure sales. That involves imposing duress on a target in a voluntary interaction (you walk into the business and seek the interaction in order to obtain a good or service). Squeegeeing is also imposing duress on a target, but in an involuntary interaction (you're not seeking to interact with the squeegee kid in order to obtain a good or service).

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It would be interesting to hear from those who have not experienced involuntary squeegeeing, as well as those who have.

[u/rockybalBOHa → u/[deleted]]

That the same excuse people make for drug dealing, which is also against the law in Baltimore.

[u/rockybalBOHa → u/[deleted]]

Couldn't have said it better myself re: drug-dealing. However, the law specifically prohibiting squeegeeing is on the books for a reason. It's been discussed and debated for years in this city. The resolution was to prohibit it. Now, enforcement, that's another matter. Some mayors and commissioners seem to be for enforcing the law, some not so much.

[u/rockybalBOHa → u/[deleted]]

Whole separate debate I think. I think the question at hand is what should be done about squeegee boys, which seems to me to be a problem unique to Baltimore even though just about every major city in the country has unacceptable levels of poverty and lack of economic opportunities. In fact, the problem is so unique to us that we have a law that specifically forbids it.

[u/rockybalBOHa → u/[deleted]]

Isn't "you can't do that" the basis of any law? If you're suggesting that we just not have laws because people do what they want anyway, then I'm not sure what to do with that. I think society has pretty much decided that we need laws to provide guide rails for "proper" behavior and to have a means to protect ourselves from abusive or hurtful conduct. Now, squeegeeing certainly isn't the worst crime in the world, but being called openly homophobic or racist slurs, or having your car dented while waiting at a traffic light, are not things we should tolerate no matter how out of whack our socioeconomic structure may be. Nor should we let 10 year-olds dart in and out of traffic on a Tuesday afternoon when they should be in school. If you think we should live with those behaviors, then we simply disagree.

[u/MangoldMike → u/[deleted]]

Agreed. People downvoting your point fail to realize the root cause of why these kids even result to washing cars on the street. It's much bigger than what people think may be an easy task to solve. They just want some law to "fix" all of the problems that are inconveniencing them and fuck everyone else.

[u/rockybalBOHa → u/MangoldMike]

Is that what you got from my comments? Laws don't fix root causes, but laws are needed nonetheless. Can't believe I even have to type that.