“Dear PoPville,
The past two days there has been a woman sitting on the sidewalk and begging in Columbia Heights. She has a child – a girl maybe 3-4 years old always seeming to be asleep in her lap, but definitely not appearing to be a normal situation of a child napping.
Today (Wednesday) I passed 3 hours apart and the child was still “sleeping.”
I know there are organized groups – mostly eastern European, Roma etc. who exploit women and children to do this, often sedating the child. The woman did not seem to speak English or Spanish. She would not engage aside from raising her hand and repeating something I did not understand.
I didn’t want to call 311 or 911 because 1. they wouldn’t know what to do or what I was even talking about, and 2. Didn’t want to risk ICE
involvement. I saw a parked police car and waited 10 minutes but the officer never appeared. I walked around looking for an officer but never saw one. I called DC Child Protective Services. They took the information but said they don’t do investigations like this and said they would contact the police.
Any other suggestions or advice?”