Earlier this week, the Rhinelander Police Department posted on Facebook warning the community about “Romanian citizens that travel in a distinctive pattern through an area to exploit people’s kindness for helping others.”
WXPR’s Hannah Davis-Reid talked to experts, as well as the police department, about the post and their concerns.
The Rhinelander Police Department posts public safety announcements on their Facebook account, which has almost 9,000 followers.
This week, they posted about “Romanian citizens” that they claimed were exploiting people’s kindness for a money grab, with a handler receiving percentages of the money they raised.
They posted pictures of a family with their young children holding signs and begging for money.
While some commenters expressed immediate concern and outrage towards the family, others said the post made them, with their children, a target.
Marian Mandache, a Roma rights expert based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, said that there was no presumption of innocence for the family.
“What I first need to point out is the idea of singling out Roma people now, whether that be directly by defining them as Roma and Gypsies, or whether that be indirectly to referring to the citizenship ‘Romanian’, because Romania is a country,” he explained.
Roma people are a transnational minority group that have been persecuted for over 1000 years.
Not all Romanians are Roma, but some Roma are Romanian.
Carol Silverman is a Professor Emerita at the University of Oregon Department of Anthropology and Folklore and Public Culture Program.
Silverman says the post is a clear example of ethnic profiling.
“One of the largest waves of immigration into America were East European Roma, who came after a period of 500 years of slavery in Romania. So speaking of why Romanian Roma might be coming to the US, we need to look at the history of Roma in Romania and in Eastern Europe in general,” she explained.
She explained that ‘gypsy’, which comes from the word “Egyptian”, is a slur for Roma people; they actually migrated out of India into Europe in about the 11th century.
Ian F. Hancock is a Professor Emeritus at the University of Texas at Austin, Director of the Romani Archives and Documentation Center, as well as a Representative to the UN (ECO-SOC/NGO Category II) and UNICEF for the Romani people.
Hancock explained that after emancipation in Romania, many Romani people’s ancestors were “left to fend for themselves, illiterate and facing intense racism.”
He explained that they learned to survive any way possible, stealing food to feed children because shopkeepers refused to serve them.
Begging isn’t a preferred way of life, rather the result of ingrained conditioning, he said.
Stereotypes about Roma people being criminals are old, prevalent, and often go unchallenged.
“Do we want police officers who are ethnically profiling entire groups of people before any information is found on an individual basis? Let them do their work about fraud on an individual basis,” said Silverman.
Mandache explained that fraud is a moral offense, but also a legal offense in most jurisdictions.
“The police here is presenting these people in a criminalized way. They are presenting them in a way in which they are infringing upon their rights to be presented innocent, right? And I haven't seen any legal decisions by a court that would establish that those people were guilty of those possible scams, right?” he said.
Mandache said it was deeply outrageous that they posted images of minors.
“To present such children in a picture where you categorize that family as being fraudsters, I think that’s a serious, serious issue, and the police need to refrain from that. I don't think they would have done that if that family was white,” he said.
Rhinelander Police Chief Lloyd Gauthier said he was not sure where the photos were from and if parents were asked for permission since he was not the one to post the photo and the officer who did is now on vacation.
“In the past several years, we've had people drive up and give them a $100 bill while we're talking to them. So it is simply for an educational purpose for our community that there's people in our community that need help, and list it where the resources for those people to get help, and there's other people who strictly, want the financial money given to them, and they're not going to seek out those other resources that are listed. It was an educational post, period,” he said.
Gauthier said the post was not discriminatory or an example of ethnic profiling.
“Based upon some of our experiences, there's an organization that specifically brings people from that country to the United States of America, where they have the opportunity to put them in positions to panhandle for financial gain,” said Gauthier.
He said they decided to make the post after receiving many calls over the last few years concerned about panhandlers, especially during the summer.
Panhandling is legal in Wisconsin.
Gauthier says there still are ordinances prohibiting people from blocking city sidewalks, as well as trespassing laws.
