The patrols, concentrating on tourist areas and shopping zones, call the police when they find someone sleeping on the street or panhandling. In a move that many other communities have made, Sacramento, after weeks of coaxing scores of people from an encampment along a river parkway, began offering them bus tickets out of town. City officials said they sent away only those who had a relative or friend who had agreed to take them in. Nearby communities have found even more creative ways to police their streets. In Roseville, a suburb about 25 miles east of Sacramento, the police go under cover to catch panhandlers in the act.
Homeless people say they are often escorted out of town.
Marysville, an old gold-rush town of 12,500 residents about 40 miles north of Sacramento, has painted 10 parking meters red, removed the timers and called them homeless meters. Please do not give cash to panhandlers. Many came by freight train, he said, drawn by the city's rescue mission and other services for the homeless. If there's no good fishing in the lake, you find another lake. In San Francisco, police sweeps and crackdowns on homeless people have become so well known that in October the National Coalition for the Homeless chose the city as the site to open a national campaign for civil rights for the homeless.