Travellers' Rest

Controversy

The Theme:

I not deny
The jury, passing on the prisoner's life,
May in the sworn twelve have a thief or two
Guiltier than him they try.

William Shakespeare, from "Henry VIII"

Layout:

Starting with this edition, Controversy will be segmented by subject. The latest addition will always appear on this page and, when it is to be replaced by another on the same or different topic, then be archived under a new title: the subject (i.e., Law Enforcement) and the date of publication (as in 04/17/99, above). Currently it appears that there will be at least four subjects: Law Enforcement, the Media, Marriage Customs and Education.

Subject for today: Law Enforcement - An e-mail dialogue with a Fraud Detective.

First things first: I don't have this man's explicit permission to quote him here, so I will snip out any particular reference to his identity; let's just call him "Yosemite Sam." (:>D) Secondly: I reserve the right to edit any such contributions, but I will make every effort to present differing points of view from mine as fairly and at least as effectively and forcefully as their original owners. If I feel that I can improve somewhat on my original arguments, I may do so freely but I will identify such improvements as later amendments, usually with brackets ([....]), and not use them to take cheap shots retroactively at the competition.

Since my responses were written privately to individuals, they might be a bit more frank and less diplomatic than some would care for. My apologies in advance for any offense but I figure that you'd rather have an accurate, if less than tactful, version of what I wrote than a sugar-coated one.

The following exchange of e-mails took place last winter. They are comprised entirely of my responses, which also contain his original points that I am answering. In general, his contributions are indicated by a ">" at the beginning of each line. Sorry it's taken so long to get around to presenting it:

At 07:31 PM 12/29/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Just a note from a musker who is interested in understanding Traveler ways.
>
Intriguing, Mr. (or Ms.?) Sam. I believe that "musker" is no longer commonly used among Irish-American Travellers (at least of my acquaintance) but was freely borrowed by us from the Romany in my great-grandfather's day. Are they or the English Travellers still using it for "policeman?" Or are you very, very old? (:>D)
Dick Waters

At 10:19 PM 12/30/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Musker is primarily used by English Travelers and I run into mostly the
>English in my neighborhood. How about Sajo? Or Sayguck?

Close enough. Did you get that from Don Wright's book?

Sorry, I can not spell
>in cant very well. My college background was deficient in the Shelta.
>
It was not even an elective for me either. Well, Sam, at the risk of being blunt: Where IS your neighborhood, what kind of detail are you working and what's on your mind?

Dick Waters

At 01:43 PM 12/31/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Well,Dick, Cops like bluntness.
>I'm a Detective- ______ P.D. Swindle Squad. 30 years. Theft by Deception,
>Pigeon Drops -Street Con Games, and Home Repair Stuff. I read about and talk
>to Travelers all the time. I got you by surfing the net looking for stuff on
>the Rom and Travelers. Just wanted to say Hello and look at your web page. I
>give 8 hour presentations on Gypsy and Traveler Crimes. (Please don't think you
>have to tell me that all T's and G's aren't criminals.) But it is important to
>know everything you can about the subject you talk about. So I search.
>Thought it might be nice to have someone answer a question for me every now
>and then. (Not seeking info on criminals from you, though.)
>
>Yosemite Sam
>

No problem, Sam, is it? I actually don't know any out-and-out criminals personally anyway; at least none among Travellers that I'm aware of. By the way, I hope that's eight one-hour presentations and not one eight-hour presentation you're talking about.

But do me a favor: if you happen to run into the King of the Irish Travellers down your way, let him know that I haven't received my share of the annual largesse yet.(:>D)

Except for the worst, and there are a few, I like to think of my more cutting-edge cousins pretty much as though they were Hagar, the Horrible, and his crew. They don't knowingly run tainted blood banks, spend collection plate money on high living, sermonize the flock while they sodomize the choir, run a telephone boiler-room or swindle their own investors like a lot of the people you can't touch. But any perp with a pick-up who isn't violent and gets away clean is declared to be a Traveller-by-default according to the locals and that's supposed to be the reason that they can't make an arrest or get a conviction. On a multiple-choice quiz, we'd be the box marked "other."

Add up the accurate money totals for all the crimes that known Travellers are convicted of. Is that the amount you talk about? Or do billions sound better?

Say, this is getting to be some tirade. Do you mind if I post it to the web site, Sam? Be a shame to waste all this ranting and raving on the calloused ears of a thirty-year veteran of the force.

If you have any questions about Irish Travellers as human beings, and not targets, I'll be glad to answer them as well as I can, just as I would for any country person.

At 01:55 AM 1/1/99 -0500, you wrote:
>Nope, Its one 8 hour presentation. You know how us "country people" like to
>talk.
>I appreciate the tirade. It's normal. Cops blame the Travelers. Travelers
>blame the Refs. Refs blame the "Gorgers". (I speak better English cant than
>Irish). But it is me that has to look the 80 year old grandmother in the eye
>and tell her everything is going to be ok. It is not a pretty sight. You have
>made a very good point, however.

So have you. I could give you Darwinian rationales about hunter-gatherer nomads doing whatever they have to in order to preserve their "freedom," but the fact of the matter is that fifty or sixty years ago, when I lived among them and learned to love the Life, the moral values of those Northern Irish Travellers I knew would not allow them to countenance that kind of behavior. In any progressive cultural context, the Travellers are among the most isolated societies in the USA. But all one has to do is look at the afternoon freak shows on television or check out the violent crime statistics to realize that there's been a descending spiral of general morality over that same period, and all of our families have been caught up in that descent as well.

From 1890 (go ahead, ask me(:>D) the law of diminishing returns has applied to the economic opportunities available to nomads in the USA. And the economic restraints have been applied to the most legitimate of activities first, to the point that skilled migratory workers could not thrive as independent contractors because of increasingly expensive licenses and other less official restrictions that were enacted primarily to discourage business competition from "outsiders." Some laws like this and many more that are just incomprehensible to Travellers have pushed them, on average, closer to the edge of "outlawry" every year. If you look up that word, by the way, you'll find that it also means "deprived of the benefits of the law of the land," in addition to the common understanding of it. The closer [that] society [the Irish Travellers], on average, gets pushed to that edge, the more likely that some individual members will jump over.

Most Travellers are motivated by three factors primarily: family, nomadic freedom, and success. Town, county, state and federal licensing, megabuck insurance requirements, sales tax certificates, you name it, whatever, make it almost impossible for them to enjoy that success in their traditional trades legitimately anymore. And they don't have the required education, credit background, documentation, or wish to settle down and work as "wage slaves." So what's left?

At 06:57 PM 1/3/99 -0500, you wrote:
>But they are Darwinian rationales. It is not an accident there are few if any
>Traveler public school teachers, lawyers, doctors, or policemen.

Few, if any, lawyers and policemen? High praise indeed! (:>D)

The Traveller is bred to be a nomad. I can't stress that too strongly. Just because he looks like you doesn't mean he can stand living your lifestyle. At least not most Travellers. And the longer a Traveller has to keep his kids in school, the longer he has to travel away from his family, instead of with it, to make a living. There are probably a lot more on the road than you have ever considered and most of them you'll never have any reason to encounter. We are nomads. Try to realize that all of what you think of as skewed logic comes straight-forward from this fact. Some of us settle down. My mother did; married a cop even. I've lived for most of a decade on the road, but never had to make a living that way. It's a tough life whether you're honest or dishonest, for that matter.

>Its not an
>accident that fathers don't encourage their sons to stay in school and
>assimilate into a non Traveler society.
>A traveler friend of mine called
>Travelers who are educated "shirt tails". I don't know if this is just an
>anacronym he made up or part of the English Trav. vocabulary. My point is that
>lack of formal and secondary education in the Traveler community is mostly
>responsible for the lack of those jobs being sought out and mastered-

No argument there. I don't write "down" to the Travellers because they can read "spelling" even if they can't [always] write "spelling" too well on average (:>D) [Boy! Right now, this is something I wish I had written more diplomatically, cousins] and they're more than bright enough to puzzle out whatever I write if they figure it's worth it. I figure being a Traveller is a lot more than being a scam-artist or getting driveway sealer all over your boots. It's a family thing and there have been many generations of us that have survived poorly but squarely. I don't exaggerate; some of our Cant goes back to the Picts during the Roman times or shortly thereafter.

We're all coming into The Age of Information now and it will limit some and empower other Travellers in ways we can only guess. I think you realize that I'm all for education of the Traveller kids and those few young misfits who are looking to better themselves [their education] are the real reason that Travellers' Rest exists on the Web in the form that it does.

>NOT that
>the Traveler community has had it's rights disinfranchchised by the Gorgers or
>country people. Your hunter-gatherer argument only musters up some support in
>a sociology class-not in the real world.

Your kids have a two or three month vacation from school each year to accommodate long-dead family farmers who needed their children's help on the job. Meanwhile migrant farm kids are out in the fields picking your crops. I'm not railing against injustice here; I'm just pointing out imbalances that favor the settled folk that you take for granted to the point that you don't even notice them.

>A home repair license in _______ costs $150.00.
>Any traveler could afford one. Insurance and other necessary items to
>any small businessman are always costly but they still manage to survive out
>there in the real world every day.

If a Traveller works only _______ he really isn't much of a Traveller. Suppose he has to pay $50 in every town he passes through to solicit work and another $100 to register (and maybe a work-day of time) as a contractor if he gets it. You get the idea. I don't speak for the amounts as factual data, just as a hypothetical. The point is: he starts out his day evading the law in a small way; it doesn't take much for him to develop a strong "it's either me or them" attitude. I don't justify scamming either old or young; I don't condone it at all but I've never heard of any "blue-sky" solutions proposed that didn't involve getting the Travellers off the road. That is just not going to happen.

> Or, like anyone else- they go out of
>business. Risks have to be taken. It is just easier for SOME people to scam
>the elderly. Your turn.

It's easier for everybody to scam the elderly. They're (we're, I should say) the only ones with any money accumulated these days. If you don't believe me, just ask Ed McMahon or Prudential Insurance or almost any Medicaid doctor.

Any scam artist, and I'm not talking about Travellers here (at least not the vast majority) is like a predator looking over a herd for likely prey. When they spot a weaker member of the herd, the race is on; not against the herd, not against the target, but against other predators. And those are not always other scam artists. They're often idiot nephews, desperate older children, crooked lawyers, "estate planners" and dishonest servants of those same elderly people who are innocent and naive enough to ask a stranger to turn his back while they get the money to pay him out of their 50 year old hope chest. Or maybe hold on to a tag-end of string while the nice utility worker measures their house for free electricity.

The predator sees that those people are going to be fleeced by somebody soon and it's his job to get there first. Now that's a Darwinian rationale.

But if you see any elderly walking around with cuts and bruises, I don't think the first thing you'd ask them about is Travellers and Gypsies, you know you'd be better off to ask them about their own kids.
>
>I love talking to you.
>
>YOSEMITE SAM
>
I love talking to me too, Sam, but you seem okay too.

Here and Now again:

I don't know whether it was the somewhat snotty joke line above or maybe my frank discussion of how and why the elderly (me included) get scammed disturbed him, but I never heard from "Sam" again. Maybe he'd feel better about me (and us) if he knew that all that information about predatory outlook came from educational television and a few mainstream sales training seminars that I have monitored for one reason or another.

According to F.B.I. statistics, local law enforcement officials routinely resolve less than twenty percent of "crimes against property," which don't include Fraud. With respect to fraud cases, I was unable to determine any particular closure rate; I suspect it's so much lower than that the police are ashamed of it. But that doesn't prevent them from multiplying any reported losses by ten or twenty times ("because everybody knows Fraud is the most under-reported of crimes") and blaming almost all of it on the Irish Travellers as a reason why they were unable to make an arrest or get a conviction in any particular case. Give us a break! All of a sudden, everybody in the roof spraying or blacktopping trades who does a lousy job has turned into an elusive member of that vast, interstate conspiracy of criminal masterminds who cannot be caught by mere mortals. Right!

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