Shady 'linoleum gypsies' offer floor covering to area elderly


If you live in Williston, then beware of the "linoleum gypsies."

According to Williston Police, two men knocked at the door of the home of an elderly couple in the 300 block of SE 2nd Street and offered them a linoleum floor covering. Once the salesmen got inside the house, they asked to go into the kitchen to better display the linoleum. One of the men held the covering across the doorway to conceal the entry of a third person who stole a "substantial" sum of money from a purse and a wallet, police reported.

The elderly are frequently targets of such "gypsy scams" and rarely report such crimes because of embarrassment, said Lt. Clay Connolly, spokesman for the department.

Anyone with information about this or similar incidents is asked to call the Williston Police Department at (352) 528-4991 or Crime Stoppers at (877) 349-8477.

EDITORIAL COMMENT:
Now it is 'linoleum gypsies' that the police in this part of the US is warning people about.
I sincerely wonder whether the PD in that town would know a Gypsy from an Albanian or whatever else. Also thy it remains possible in the USA, the country that claims to be such a bastion of liberty and all that jazz, to defame an ethnic group in such a manner beats me. I bet they could not say "linoleum Jews" even if it would have been a group of unscrupulous Jewish men. Why then do this to the ethnic People called "Gypsies" amongst the general public but who might call themselves Romanies? Mind you, the USA is not alone in this and we shall have a few articles on the German counterpart of this blog that show this. Even the police authorities in Germany still break EU laws on discrimination by actually saying that some perpetrator was of the "of the group of Sinti & Roma".