Women use kids to scam people

From the Daily News:

That panhandling mom with a child in her lap?

Oh, baby! It’s a scam, according to NBC New York. While panhandling is legal in New York, a month-long investigation followed nine women around the city and concluded that they were working and living together.

Social service workers said the women have repeatedly refused shelter and aid because they only want cash.

"This is a scam — a business," the non-profit The Doe Fund’s George McDonald told NBC New York.

McDonald said his organization has done its research on the women and witnessed them handing off the same children, exploiting them by “working in shifts.”

Homeless women are seen more and more bringing their children along to panhandle.

Research suggests that some of the women are 'working in shifts' and handing off the children to each other to use as props.

Children can’t be used to peddle, according to seldom-enforced state law. But it’s a statute that’s being flaunted as video shows these women collecting fast cash from sympathetic passersby.

But the investigation found the women were using Grand Central Terminal as a meeting point and living in the same East New York building.

Charles Park finally cleaned

From the Queens Courier:

Frank M. Charles Memorial Park is getting spruced up.

With Sandy debris lingering nearly six months after the storm, Councilmember Eric Ulrich has partnered with the Doe Fund to help clean up the community park, which is run under the auspices of by Gateway National Recreation Area.

Nine “men in blue” from the Doe Fund, which finds work for homeless men and women, will help remove debris in what is considered a neighborhood park, although it’s under the National Park Service (NPS) umbrella.

Ulrich said he reached out to George McDonald, president and founder of the Doe Fund, after coverage of the park’s worsened condition following the storm.

“This was a reaction to the published newspaper reports about the terrible conditions in Charles Park,” Ulrich said.

The councilmember said further pressure had to be put on NPS to secure that Charles Park and other parts of Gateway get the same attention that parks across the country do.