Aggressive Panhandlers Anger Ventura Merchants

Sammy Abdulhai feels sympathy for some of the scruffy people who wander the streets and alleys outside his downtown Ventura liquor store.

“The mentally ill, they’re OK,” Abdulhai said. “I give them credit, and they always pay their bills.”

What bothers Abdulhai are panhandlers of sound mind but indolent character--the beggars who aggressively harass customers at his store and other downtown businesses.

“Bums--that’s what you call them,” he said. “They get drunk and walk the street with knives and weapons.”

Abdulhai should know. Last June, he gave about $10 worth of food to three beggars who told him they were hungry. Then they stood outside his store and pestered customers for more handouts, he said. When Abdulhai shooed them away, one of the beggars, Tristan Mena, threatened to come back and shoot him.

The next night, Mena made good on his threat outside the store, shooting Abdulhai twice in the arm, once in the abdomen and once in the side. When Mena was arrested a short time later, he had a syringe in his pocket and, at age 17, a long record of juvenile offenses.

He was convicted Oct. 24 in Ventura County Superior Court of attempted first-degree murder and faces a maximum term of life in prison. At a hearing Monday where Mena was ordered to undergo psychological tests, Judge Steven Z. Perren made it clear that he intends to send Mena to prison for what the judge called “a vicious, cowardly and cruel act.”

That’s fine, Abdulhai said, but what about all the other panhandlers who set up shop outside downtown businesses such as his? “What happened to me could happen to anyone,” he said.

Pointing to a wall of his building where loiterers urinate, Abdulhai asked: “Why does my business have to be hurt?”

Abdulhai, a 23-year-old native of Syria, and his family bought Clark’s Liquor Store on California Street three years ago. In terms of sales, “we should be the best liquor store in town,” he said. “About 50% of our business has been lost,” he said, because panhandlers scare off customers.

He said he wishes that the city would ban panhandling--which courts have said is protected by the Constitution. He also wants the city to provide housing for the homeless, but only for those willing to work.

Abdulhai is not the first downtown Ventura merchant to complain about panhandlers, who for years have been the target of angry proprietors and occasional police crackdowns. But he is the only one who can point to where a panhandler’s bullet remains lodged in his abdomen, too close to nerves to be removed.

And many merchants interviewed Monday said they share his concern that panhandlers are becoming more insistent.

“Some are very aggressive,” said Arthur Costello, who works at Karen’s Bakery & Deli on Main Street. “There’s one on every corner. It drives you nuts.”

Costello said some panhandlers follow customers into the bakery, watch as they pull out their money and then ask for a handout. He said he kindly asks them to step outside.

“You can’t do much about them,” Costello said. “They’re entitled to ask in a polite way.” He said he frequently provides food to needy people who ask for it courteously.

But Costello has little hope for city efforts to revitalize downtown as long as it is home to so many homeless. “Everybody wants Main Street to be better,” he said. “But you have drunks accosting people and cursing them.”

Brian Trenwith, former owner of the Bombay Bar & Grill on Main Street, agreed that “there are just too many of them.”

In the past few years, beggars in Ventura have become “professional panhandlers,” Trenwith said. “Now they’re aggressive.”

Sherilene Oelschlager, owner of the Sea Things shell store on Santa Clara Street, said she has had several run-ins with panhandlers since she bought the store in July.

“It definitely discourages business,” Oelschlager said. “One guy came into the store and bothered customers at the register for money.” When she asked him to leave, she said, “he threatened to kill me and hit the window when he left.

“I was so scared. You never know what they’re going to do.”

Even a few panhandlers agreed Monday that some of their colleagues have become too brazen.

“They overdid it down at Vons,” said Don Cody, referring to the nearby Mission Plaza shopping center where merchants have long complained about panhandlers.

Sitting in the sun on Main Street, Cody, 38, said he has lived on the street for 18 years and in Ventura for eight months. He said he spends nights in the Ventura River bed where several homeless people camp.

As he spoke, fellow panhandlers Pam Dawson and Gregory Fellers took turns puffing on a cigarette that Dawson had just rolled.

Cody said panhandlers can stay on good terms with merchants if they follow a few rules. For example, he said, “you never hit up someone going into a store, only when they’re coming out.” That way, he said, the merchant gets a sale.

But lately, he said, “people are getting too drunk and too aggressive.”

Dawson agreed. “Drinkers do that,” she said.