About a month ago in my local town (Wiesbaden, population 285,000)....city police announced that they were going to take on 'intrusive begging' (basically, the aggressive situation)....as the Christmas market started up.
If you sat through commentary of local Germans....they generally have a frown on this topic. If you go back to the 1980s....there just wasn't any begging going on in main part of town (from the train-station to the end of the shopping district).
At some point around 2000 to 2005....you might have noticed some trend starting up. Over the past five years? There's probably fifty-odd beggars that you might see (counting the train-station, and shopping district). Some are passive....some are aggressive.
The police in their November 'chat'.....there were active beggar 'gangs'. Not sure how they meant the term 'gang' or how the group functioned (either with criminal intent or without).
Last Friday, the police did an update on the topic....saying 18 'expulsions' were carried out. Expulsion? Basically, the two-man patrol gets notified....arrives to where the beggar is active, and goes into the friendly-police routine ('we just want to carry you to a warm place with food' situation). One might assume that a social worker than gets all chatty there and makes you aware of the forty-odd services they could provide.
The one thing that the police did point out....most people are probably just regular beggar-types, and not really with some 'gang'....so this effort is helpful with both types.
Will this continue after the the Christmas market shuts down? No one says much.
My worst experience in this matter? My wife and I were at a regular downtown grocery-store last December, and some beggar couple were hitting on people within the store itself. About a month after this....I noticed the store had some uniformed guy at the entry, which I assume it was to send a 'message' about aggressive begging.
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