(Above) A Chicago Police vehicle is parked outside of Marina City on Tuesday afternoon, following a fight between a resident and a panhandler.

September 13, 2011 – With only fleeting improvements, the problem of aggressive panhandlers seems to be getting worse for residents living north of the Loop. On Tuesday afternoon, a Marina City resident who was taking his kids home got into a fight with a panhandler.

Bryan Clifford, who says he has martial arts experience and has been in the military, threw onto a car a man Clifford says had threatened him. It happened at about 5:12 p.m., just after Clifford parked on Dearborn Street near an entrance to Marina City.

“The homeless man from the bridge approached from behind,” he recalls. “He asked me for ten dollars – not change – ten dollars. I said, ‘dude, you got to go away. I’ve got my kids here, have a little respect.’ He said, ‘I ain’t going [expletive] nowhere.’”

When the man then took two steps toward him, Clifford says he warned him again. “I said, ‘dude, you better go. This is not acceptable.’ He then tells me he’s going to stab me.”

That’s when Clifford approached the man “aggressively.”

“I didn’t try to strike him. I pushed him. He then proceeded to come back at me. I gave him a fake, like I was going to hit him. I wrapped him up, threw him down on the car. And I said I’m going to let you go [if you] go away. He said ‘yes,’ I let him go, he came back at me again so I threw a kick at his face.”

“I can handle myself probably better than most people in the building,” says Clifford. “So if I’m not going to do it, who’s going to do it?”

With his children, ages three and five, nearby, Clifford says he did not want to “beat this guy to a pulp.”

Instead, he kicked the man’s knee. The man fell onto the ground. Clifford went into Marina City but not before the man threatened to burn his car. When Clifford came back, the man was gone.

Two Chicago police vehicles responded, arriving about a minute later. Clifford filed a police report. There were no injuries.