who, or what, is a Gypsy?

     The Gypsies, or gypsies, were an ethnic or cultural group from various parts of Europe, whose actual origins are supposedly still unknown. Most of what is written about them is spurious at best, going back to the self-proclaimed "experts" on Gypsies, who had penetrated their "closed" culture  more than a hundred years ago.  Not only the writing about Gypsies is spurious, but so are many of the Gypsies--especially those who have become famous for being just that. Gypsy Rose Lee wasn't a Gypsy, for instance--neither was Little Egypt--two strippers who became so famous their names were household words.  Real Gypsies were something more like Amish people, including the tendency to marry people who were part of the same culture--the only sense in which their society was closed. Real Gypsies were forbidden to tell fortunes, so chances are that a fortune-teller claiming to be a Gypsy, isn't. The  "reticence" of Gypsies to talk about their "secret" culture has never existed. A Gypsy being interviewed by someone who wanted to know the secret of telling fortunes, and who refused to divulge this  "secret", has come down to us as someone who was protecting the secrets of Gypsydom from prying outsiders.
     This should all be history by now, especially as there are so few Gypsies left--but it isn't. Police departments in the United States still use the term "Gypsy" to mean anything from vagrant to con artist. Many criminals of this kind insist on referring to themselves as Gypsies, so the police are not entirely to blame. When told that "Gypsy" means a particular ethnic group, those who style themselves Gypsies refuse to believe it. I have watched this on TV within the past few months--on two different popular crime dramas. Each used the term Gypsy to refer to a family of particularly sordid people--neither of which, in all probability, were Gypsies, although they might have been from Eastern Europe. The ruse of claiming to be a Gypsy, or even dressing as one, was popular in Europe. Anyone who went looking for the con artist would have to look among Gypsies, who were thought to be so clever ( perhaps even with magic) that the suspects were not found.  A few hundred years of this supposedly didn't do the Gypsies any harm--until you consider that they are actually a nearly extinct people.

Suggestion--police departments find another term to use, instead of using the name of an ethnic group as a criminal charge, as the Nazis did.