"Spanger" Etiquette?

The street term for "spare changing" (aka panhandling) is "spanging" (pronounced spayn•jeen). Yesterday, a group of homeless kids were doing so while sitting together on a sidewalk in the biz district. A couple of cleancut people, maybe college-aged, showed up nearby, clutching notebooks/literature for "Environment America" -- a nonprofit purposed with environmental issues.

It's common to see college-kids on the streets pitching various organizations, often getting paid to do so, as they sell memberships and/or just collect donations. This is a form of paid spanging, really -- if organizational instead of just private and personal. But they get their $ out of approaching strangers and asking for money, so what's really so different to that extent?

These two were doing so in close proximity to the street kids also doing their version. The street kids asked the two if they could go down the block a ways, since it's something of a tacit custom for spangers to not position too closely... as it competes too much for each individual going by. As the kids explained it, too, once a person says "no" then that's still in their mind and is their mode if someone else immediately appeals to them again.

Of course all this was likely pretty alien to the two well-meaning two soliciters, and they seemed taken aback by the kids' contact and request. But they also resisted cooperating at all. So the kids were becoming a bit frustrated and annoyed, although far from anything too overbearing. But they persisted in trying to persuade the two, since this was a location outside a popular cafe and a fairly promising spanging spot.

One of the two "canvassers" took out their cell phone and punched three numbers, and holding it their ear. Everyone noticing assumed they'd called "911" -- the police. At that, the kids got more visibly miffed, expressing their resentment, and departed down the block rather than have further confrontation or trouble. Yet, another person, a bit older, encountered them getting the story of what had just happened, and then approached the two contenders himself. He very reasonably tried to explain the situation and dynamics to the two, although they were still being uptight. He persisted, appealing to them as just persons and advocating cooperation, allowance toward the kids and their plight, etc. and disapproving of calls to police or any perceived need to.

The one with the phone had apparently cancelled the call when the kids took off, but then said that he'd been calling his supervisor, not the police. And he relaxed his stance somewhat. His companion then quietly, briefly discussed the matter with him and they both moved to the other side of the street, in front of a bookstore.

This was an interesting intersection of factors and dynamics.