THE BOGUS BEGGARS
Police say city’s ‘homeless’ have place to live, make £100s on street... and some even use £500 iPhones
‘No person begging in city is homeless’
A SCOTTISH city is being targeted by bogus beggars who pretend to be homeless to rake in hundreds of pounds a week, according to police.
An officer who filed a report to a community council in Stirling claimed beggars are wandering around with expensive phones and spending their cash on drugs and alcohol.
The officer also claimed they were not homeless and were conning residents.
The report, submitted to Mercat Cross and City Centre Community Council, follows a clampdown in which police chiefs vowed to ‘clean up’ Stirling’s rough sleepers.
The un-named officer wrote: ‘Due to our persistence we have made great inroads into cleaning up Stirling city centre in relation to persons sleeping rough, drinking alcohol, causing a general nuisance and disorder. Some of the main offenders are on bail not to enter Stirling city centre during retail hours and some are in fact banned from entering Stirling City Centre at any time.
‘We continue to have persons begging and appearing to be homeless. I can confirm no person begging in the city is homeless. They have a home provided to them by the council.
‘The persons begging are making hundreds of pounds a week and are spending this on drugs and alcohol, some even have £500 iPhones.
‘It continues to be our intention to clamp down robustly on these individuals every day we are on duty.’
The officer’s comments have been criticised by homeless charities and yesterday the head of community policing in the area said they were intended to ‘reassure’ locals.
Inspector Donna Bryans, head of Stirling East Police Division, said: ‘I would firstly like to stress that protecting vulnerable people from harm, including the homeless community, is one of our top priorities and on a daily basis local officers are engaging with these individuals to ensure they have not been, nor are they currently, victim of any crime.
‘The comments made during the community council meeting were the observations of a member of the community policing team, who has regular interaction with local residents, businesses, elected members and those begging on the streets.
‘The officer’s aim was to reassure communities that those who are legitimately homeless are not regularly involved in the issues observed by the public that are associated with begging.’
But homelessness charity Shelter Scotland accused police of ‘stirring up prejudice’ against the city’s most vulnerable.
The charity’s director, Graeme Brown, said: ‘Not all homeless people beg and not all people begging are homeless, so it’s wrong to generalise in this way as each homeless person is a human being.
‘Homeless people deserve to be treated with dignity and respect not face abuse on the streets as a result of stigma and prejudice stirred up by the type of generalisations contained in this report.
‘Rough sleeping is just the tip of the iceberg of homelessness in Scotland, with thousands more living their lives in limbo in unsuitable temporary accommodation. We need to ensure all local authorities across Scotland have the means to offer homeless people the support they need and are entitled to.’
Start-Up Scotland and Stirling Street Pastors both help rough sleepers in the city and work with the council to help tackle the issue.
A Stirling Council spokesman said: ‘Rough sleeping is not a common issue within the Stirling area but we
have provisions in place to help anyone in need.
‘Individuals can contact the council in various ways for support, and our teams will also proactively approach individuals who we believe may be sleeping rough to offer them appropriate support and assistance into temporary accommodation.’
He could not provide any homelessness statistics for the city.
Nationally, the Scottish Government holds records of people living in halfway houses, but it does not hold statistics of how many people are sleeping rough.
Latest statistics show there were 17,797 applications for homelessness assistance during the six months from April to September 2017, two per cent higher than the same period in 2016.
And as of September 2017, there were 6,581 children living in temporary accommodation, a 10 per cent rise on the previous year.
At the time the data was recorded Scotland had 10,899 households in temporary accommodation, a third of which contained children. Only two of these households was in Stirling, according to the report.
As well as genuinely homeless people, Stirling has also fallen victim to ‘barefoot beggars’ who worked as part of an organised gang.
In April 2014, a Scottish Daily Mail investigation revealed that the Scotland-wide con was taking place in many major cities and towns.
In what was described as a lucrative operation, the conmen ‘commuted’ by train at the will of a gangmaster and were reported to have been begging in Glasgow, Edinburgh, Dundee, Aberdeen, Stirling and Ayr.
The gangmasters also ferried large groups of the conmen and women to city centre locations by van with each earning just £20 a day in many cases.
We told at the time how Caroline Dark, a fundraiser for a theatre company from Glasgow, fell victim to the scam when she saw a barefoot young man in the city’s Buchanan Street, shivering uncontrollably as though he was suffering from an illness.
The woman, then 36, bought the beggar a pair of £8 slippers from H&M – but by the time she came out of the shop, he had fled. A Scottish Government spokesman said: ‘While it is not a specific offence to beg in Scotland, a range of existing general laws are available to deal with acts of aggressive begging.’
‘Provisions in place to help’