Call it what it is: blackmail.
I don't see why cities should have to resort to paying them off. They surely violate numerous laws with their scheme, anything from doing business without a license to jaywalking. But of course to enforce such laws you need cops to chase them down and arrest them in broad daylight, which risks bad optics for the city if the cops get too overzealous. Still, better policing is the correct answer.
I seriously doubt paying them off even could work. Why would they not take the payment then do it anyway? You'd still need cops to arrest them to know which didn't stay true to the agreement.
Because then they wouldn't get paid more later.
Have you lived in the ghetto or in extremely poor neighborhoods? I grew up in Oakland, Modesto, and Fresno, with gang banging friends and having to deal with these other gangsters not in your crew, who would like nothing more than to beat you up, steal your cash, and brag to their friends about commit their crimes. Those who commit crimes will commit crimes on the whim, jump you and cash, and never once have foresight on how their present actions have future consequences.
Empower bullies and lowlifes, and they'll continuously pick on you and bully you and others.
Yes.
> Those who commit crimes will commit crimes on the whim
The vast majority of the time, that "whim" is "I need cash to buy dinner". This is especially true of people squeegeeing cars.
I would much rather see full-fledged safety nets like UBI, but paying people such that they are no longer dependent on nuisance or outright crime for survival is a start.
you're always paying someone. You can enact punitive and harsh measures and put kids and teenagers into the justice system where they'll cost 10x as much if not more including in their adulthood, or you can draw a baseline in and simply pay them enough money to not resort to this quasi-begging. Couple this with an attendance requirement to go to school and you're probably saving yourself countless of dollars so I don't really see the issue.
It's basically analogous to war on drugs type policies. Instead of just providing addicts with clean needles and drugs you spent ten times as much and wasting police resources on chasing harmless people around. It's moralizing instead of effective policy
In my city we’ve become inundated with sad sack beggars at intersections. Many of them are part of organized rings of hustlers. Our mayor wants to respect their feeling or whatever and police are not allowed to engage them. In one case, there was a full on brawl on an exit ramp between rival groups before the cops were cleared to break it up.