A cop was going to give a familiar vagrant a ticket for panhandling, so he asked for his ID. When the conversation took an unexpected turn, the officer ordered the man into his cruiser. The homeless man was shocked to see where he was going.
Deputy Jacob Swalwell with the Alameda County Sheriff’s Office knew he had to issue a ticket after he saw an older man panhandling for money along one of Hayward, California’s busiest freeway off-ramps. As Swalwell explained to ABC 7, he had seen the same guy out there begging for money for a couple of years, and it presented a problem.
“It’s a safety issue, and that was more of a concern than the panhandling,” Swalwell explained. So, planning to write the man a ticket, he approached and asked for ID. The 66-year-old man identified himself as Michael Myers and said he was a lifelong Alameda County resident, but he didn’t have an ID to show the deputy. Read the full story here ▶
