Police target city scroungers
A police crackdown over the past few days has focused on curbing two scourges of Athenian daily and nightly life: begging at intersections and illegal parking at nightclubs, police said yesterday. An alleged attack upon a female motorist who recently refused to have her car window cleaned by a beggar at a central Athens intersection triggered the initiative, according to Attica police chief Asimakis Golfis. Following the mobilization of some 900 police officers, who have carried out more than 2,600 checks in recent days, 158 suspected beggers have been arrested and 358 taken in for questioning. Meanwhile, officers have been cracking down on the practice favored by nightclub owners of employing «valets» to park customers’ cars in public areas around the establishment for a charge of some 10 euros. This operation focused on Kolonaki, Thiseion and Petralona and resulted in 30 arrests and the removal of license plates from 117 cars. Many of these so-called valets had been getting key copies cut and then stealing the cars, Golfis claimed.
