Spare change in your pocket won’t last very long on Marshall Street.

If you don’t spend it in one of the shops, it can disappear in other ways -whether you’re willing to part with it or not.

Bill Nester, a manager and partial owner of Manny’s, knows the difficulty of dealing with panhandlers firsthand.

A few years ago, when a panhandler was pestering his customers, Nester decided it was time to put his foot down and ask the loiterer to leave his storefront. Instead of complying, the man punched Nester square in the mouth, causing his teeth to puncture his lip.

‘It’s just part of being up here,’ Nester said. ‘It’s something that after 20 years you just start to accept.’

That doesn’t mean no one has searched for a solution. Early this fall, the Syracuse Common Council was set to vote on a proposed ordinance that would outlaw aggressive and persistent panhandling and essentially quicken the process of arresting panhandlers who may have harassed patrons and passersby. Police would be able to arrest these panhandlers as soon as an incident of harassment was reported, instead of requiring the patron involved to fill out the necessary paperwork in order to file a formal complaint.

Just prior to the vote, however, Syracuse Mayor Matt Driscoll pulled the ordinance. He promised to further enforce the current laws on panhandling, which many Marshall Street retailers say are ineffective.

Jerry Dellas, president of the Crouse-Marshall Business Administration, was one of the people who pushed to pass the ordinance. His family, which owns Varsity Pizza and Faegan’s, is used to the presence of these panhandlers. He was disgusted at the fact that this ordinance, along with four previous ones, had failed to come to fruition.

Dellas credits the pulling of the ordinance to an article that ran in The Post-Standard that painted a more sympathetic picture of the panhandlers than he feels they deserve.

‘The article in The Post-Standard killed it,’ he said. ‘The council members didn’t want to be seen in a poor light for supporting it.’

Lt. Joe Cecile of the Syracuse Police Department said that such an ordinance would have greatly aided the police in quelling the problem on Marshall Street and throughout the city.

‘It would have helped us do our job,’ he said. ‘We get calls, but because of the harassment thing and having to make a statement, some people don’t have the time or don’t want to go to that extreme.’

To Nester and other retailers on Marshall Street, customer harassment is just one of the problems caused by the panhandlers’ presence.

‘They will actually urinate right in front of the stores,’ Nester said. ‘But the police have to see them do it in order to arrest them.’

Such acts, he said, hurt his business substantially.

‘Some of these people are pretty aggressive,’ Nester said. ‘Is there any way to prove it (financially)? No, but in my mind it is.’

He says he deals with complaints from customers daily, particularly from young women with children who stop into the store.

‘They don’t want to shop in a situation like that,’ Nester said. ‘A lot of people don’t even want to come down here. The street might look good, but if (the panhandlers) are here, it affects us.’

Shamik Sen Gupta, a School of Information Studies graduate student, says she fears heading down to Marshall Street at times because of the panhandlers.

‘If I’m walking home alone in the night, I don’t want to be harassed,’ Sen Gupta said. ‘It could be anybody, and it’s really scary when they come up to you. If I’m alone, I think twice about going down there. But it’s mostly at night when they’re shady.’

Yet it isn’t just women who are subject to harassment from some of the panhandlers.

‘They just don’t leave you,’ said Saurabh Bhasin, an IST graduate student. ‘They say that if you’re going into a store, maybe you’ll have some change when you come out. If they can’t get the money out of you, they’ll ask for a cigarette. And it’s pretty annoying.’

Yet some panhandlers, Sen Gupta admits, use less annoying tactics.

‘The guy at Faegan’s who dances and plays the guitars, he is hilarious,’ Sen Gupta said. ‘I’d give money to him.’

No matter the tactic, the panhandlers seem to be successful.

‘The main reason they’re still up here is because they keep making money for it,’ Nester said. ‘They’re making more money than some of the merchants up here.’

One Marshall Street panhandler, who identified himself only as Timothy, says that his efforts aren’t as profitable as the retailers claim.

‘I thought it was supposed to be a rich university,’ Timothy said. ‘I guess everybody’s supposed to have a lot of money. But they don’t help out that much. A dollar here, a dollar there, but that’s about it.’

Timothy, a Syracuse native who says he spent four years in the Army working heavy artillery in Italy and Turkey, admits that the interference from the police is minimal.

‘It’s not bad,’ Timothy said. ‘The university security rides around, but that’s about it.’

Instead, he claims that the main problem he faces is with the retailers who take matters into their own hands by yelling at the panhandlers and chasing them from their stores.

Cecile, Dellas and Nester all agree that the most effective way to halt the efforts of the panhandlers is to supply them with necessities like food or to donate money to local homeless shelters.

But even these acts of kindness might just be wasted efforts.

‘I’ve seen people go get them food,’ Nester said, ‘and the first thing they do is throw it in the garbage.’

Unless people change their methods of assisting the panhandlers or an ordinance is passed, it seems like the situation for the panhandlers on Marshall Street will stay the same. But, for the most part, realtors and patrons have been forced to give up their efforts to change it.

‘It’s no use any more,’ Nester said. ‘They don’t listen to us downtown or at the police department.’

Published on February 8, 2004 at 12:00 pm