“Dear Bob,
My name is Pierre. I’m 33 years old and I have worked as a pickpocket in Paris since the age of 13.”
We received this intriguing email (in French) in October 2009. It ended with an invitation to meet in Paris in order to exchange stories and anecdotes.
Over the course of 44 additional emails, “Pierre” told us about himself and his work. He claimed to have a graveyard factory job. Pickpocketing was a sideline, he said, but one he took seriously. He used to do his thieving in the Paris Metro, but now works strictly out of town. The laws changed recently, he explained, making it easier for police to pick up and hold known offenders.
In November, Pierre wrote that he and a partner would be going to a huge farming expo in Brussels. Neither Pierre nor his partner are involved in farming, of course.
A souvenir; proof of prowess; a trophy.
In December, he attached a photo to his email, captioned “a memory from Brussels.” Fingers grasping a wallet.
Eventually Bob and Pierre spoke at length on Skype (without video). We decided to visit Paris. Not just to meet Pierre, of course; but the rendezvous would be a bonus.
Coincidentally, we are in the beginning of a documentary film project. Not the beginning, really, as the idea germinated exactly four years ago this month. But we have finally begun shooting. We have a first-rate film director, Kun Chang (the driving force behind the project); a mighty production house; and the world’s best-regarded multimedia company as primary investor and distributor. (We’ll formally announce the project soon.) Our film director spent the week in Paris with us.
Pierre picked the place for our meeting: a brasserie called Au Canon de la Nation. We walked over early for a quick lunch. Could this part-time-Parisien-pickpocket possibly know that canon is criminal parlance for pickpocket in the U.S.? The in-joke gave us a little laugh as we took chilly terrace seats on our first day in the City of Light-fingers, wondering if our thief would show up.
He was 45 minutes early! Is that eager, or what? Tall and elegant in a black blazer, briefcase in hand, Pierre wouldn’t raise an eyebrow in any situation. He is what I call a “gentleman thief:” one who can insinuate himself among people of means without looking out of place.
He arrived with a gift: a copy of the book Pickpockets!, by François Abjean. The author was a formidable pickpocket cop in Paris, who arrested Pierre in 1993. The book was stolen from a library, of course. [Update 6/28/10: Pierre wrote today, offended by this reference to the book being stolen. He bought it on the internet, he explained.]
We talked for an hour over a thimble-sized espresso—proving the frivolity of the bottomless American coffee mug. Kun, our director, translated—proving the deficiency of Google translations and Bob’s schoolboy French.
The Parisian pickpocket allowed himself to be photographed from behind.
We all planned to meet again the next day. Pierre would bring his partner, who had already agreed to meet us. Kun hinted to the possibility of filming the thieves, and handed over a bag of disguises from which the two could build new looks. Pierre smirked at the plastic glasses and fake mustaches, but thought it was feasible, as long as his and his friend’s identities were protected.
This was a good beginning for our week in Paris and a promising start of our film project. Bob, Kun, and I left Au Canon de la Nation on a high. Was it just the coffee?
Ms. Shopper’s in the store when her kid has to pee. While she’s helping the little one, her purse is stolen from the store restroom. She put it on the floor, hung it from the hook, left it on the stroller, whatever. Now it’s gone. She reports it to the store manager and goes home, distraught.
At home she gets a phone call. It’s the store. They’ve got her purse. She packs the little one into the car and drives back to the store with relief and apprehension. What will be missing from her bag?
Dragging the kid, she marches into the store, finds a manager, and expresses her gratitude, relief, and apprehension, all at once.
“We didn’t find it,” the manager says.
“But you phoned!”
“We didn’t.”
Ms. Shopper goes home, rattled.
Yep. Her house has been burglarized.
When we interviewed Luciano in Naples, Italy, our translator, a Napolitano, explained how Rolexes are stolen off the wrists of drivers in the summer.
The team targets expensive cars and scopes out the drivers’ watches from the vantage point of a motorcycle. It’s hot. The windows are up and the air-conditioner is on. Traffic is heavy, as always in Naples, and there are no such things as lanes. Cars squeeze into whatever interstices exist.
There’s a Mercedes that fits the bill. A scooter slips alongside it; the scooter driver folds down the Mercedes’ side mirror in order to pass, and winds away through the gridlock. The Mercedes driver opens her window and readjusts the side mirror with her left hand. That’s the moment another scooter zooms up, rips the Rolex or Cartier or Piaget right off the extended wrist, follows the first scooter between stagnant cars, and disappears into an alley.
[dropcap letter=”N”]o thanks, I’ll carry that bag myself,” Marianne Crossley said to the porter as she stepped out of the London black cab, “it’s too valuable.” She handed a fistful of pound sterling to the driver, hefted her designer tote, and followed the porter into the cool marble lobby of the Langham Hilton Hotel.
Elegance embraced her. Marianne straightened her posture. The Langham was exclusive. She was privileged. She imagined herself belonging to the “UC,” as she thought of it, English Upper Class. Her entire European vacation would be the height of luxury; the black cab and Langham lobby were just the beginning.
Marianne chatted brightly with the reception staff as she checked in, a fresh veneer of energy covering the exhaustion and jetlag of her journey. Emotionally, she had already slipped into something comfortable, something contrived, perhaps a bit pretentious. Cloistered within the confines of the lobby, she felt protected, shielded from the rudenesses of the real world.
You know what’s coming. Marianne took her room key in one hand and reached for her tote with the other. It was gone.
The Langham’s two lobby cameras caught the crook, but the video was not monitored by security officers and was only viewed after the fact. When the larceny was discovered and the tapes reviewed, an interloper could be seen in Marianne’s proximity; but the front desk blocked the camera’s view of the tote. Neither the hotel, nor the police, recognized the suspect as a known thief.
Hotel lobbies are common sites of bag theft. To the guest they offer a false sense of security, with doormen in their guard-like uniforms, desk clerks facing outward, and bellmen looking after luggage. In reality, most anyone can enter a lobby, and who’s to say whether or not they have legitimate business in the hotel? At peak hours, reception staff are harried and the lobby swirls with the incoming, the outgoing, guests of guests, and lookyloos.
Some small hotels keep their entrances locked and visitors must be buzzed in, but many of these have no security staff or video surveillance. Large hotels, with shops and restaurants open to the public, may have guards and cameras but are as exclusive as a post office: anyone can come and go without suspicion. Which are safer?
There is no answer to that question. The responsibility for personal belongings is the traveler’s—period. We may give our luggage to bellmen and that is fine; but if we don’t, or if we have a carry-on, a roll-aboard, a purse, or anything we prefer to handle ourselves, its safekeeping is our responsibility. Hotel staff don’t know whose is whose or who belongs to whom. Perhaps a Langham employee saw a man take Marianne’s bag. Perhaps he assumed the man was Marianne’s husband.
The Langham is not particularly prone to lobby lifts, and neither did it suffer a rash of them. Perhaps an opportunist overheard Marianne’s general announcement in the portico that her bag was “too valuable” to entrust to a hotel employee. Perhaps not.
Marianne was luckier than most victims. Her bag was found intact by a London businessman who went to the trouble of phoning her home in America. Relatives there told him where she was staying and he personally delivered the bag to her, refusing a reward or reimbursement for the international phone call. Only cash had been taken from Marianne’s bag. Yet, in the interim days, she’d had to replace her passport and airline tickets, cancel her credit cards, arrange to get cash, and file a police report.
If the Langham were on busy Oxford Street, this lobby lift would make more sense. But it’s not; the Langham is on a relatively quiet street several blocks off Oxford. Hotels smack on a main tourist drag have many more lobby thefts; those on La Rambla, in Barcelona, come first to my mind. But if it can happen at the Langham, it can happen anywhere.
And if it can happen in seemingly-safe Scandinavia, it can happen anywhere. Certain frequent visitors during Stockholm’s summer season have been dubbed “breakfast thieves.” They don’t steal breakfast; they lurk on the fringes of sumptuous buffets at upscale hotels, waiting for a moment of inattention.
“They lie in wait for a businessman to fetch a second glass of orange juice,” said Anders Fogelberg, head of the Stockholm police department’s tiny pickpocket detail, “and in that instant of opportunity, they and the businessman’s laptop, briefcase, or mini-computer skip out the door.”
With a firm grip on the patient’s big toe, the hospital orderly entered the police inspector’s office. He carried the full weight of the patient’s plastered leg, which extended from the wheelchair without any other support. As he was pushed from behind and pulled by the toe, the patient hunched awkwardly in the rusty iron wheelchair. A male nurse had the ancient chair tipped precariously back, which thrust the broken leg to a painful height.
As he was wheeled in, the patient gripped the armrest of the chair with one hand and clutched his broken ribs with the other. A procession of plainclothes police and hospital staff followed. The patient was a pickpocket, brutally beaten by his most recent victim.
Mumbai Police Inspector Ashok Desai had not required much prodding to produce a pickpocket. He sat behind the desk in his lilac-colored office at Victoria Terminus and chatted amiably with us, shoes and socks off, cap off, smooth bald head reflecting the slow revolutions of a ceiling fan. Curiously eager to cooperate, he buzzed his peon and ordered him in Hindi when we asked to interview a thief. Shortly thereafter, his office doors were thrown open and the broken criminal wheeled in.
“Now let me explain something,” Bob said, leaning forward. “If he lies to me, I will know. I want only the truth.”
Without waiting for translation, the pickpocket replied in Hindi. “I speak only the truth to you,” he said, Inspector Desai translating. “I swear to you.” He raised his open right hand and placed it stiffly against his nose and forehead, thumbtip to nosetip, like a vertical salute.
Bob Arno shows pickpocket video to VT Police
Before the battered thief was brought in, the Inspector wanted to be certain that he wouldn’t be glorified in the press, nor made fun of by us. The man had received the beating he deserved, Desai said. His huge curled mustache held the shadow of a smile. While we waited, he dictated a memo to an assistant and sent another running for masala chai, spiced milky tea. Pigeon feathers swirled on the floor in a mini whirlwind.
Rahul was wheeled in and parked beside Bob. A posse of police and medical staff stood behind his rusty throne like male ladies-in-waiting. After promising truth, Rahul looked back and forth between Bob and the Inspector with alert eyes, and answered without hesitation.
He steals only on trains at the passengers’ moments of boarding or alighting, he explained. Never on buses. His only victims are wealthy businessmen, easily identifiable by the size of their bellies and grooming of their mustaches. He tapped his own thin mustache and sunken belly, indicating the local signifiers of affluence. All the police recognize Rahul and his gang. Therefore, they usually commit their thefts a station or two away from Central Station. He was caught this time because he’d been drinking a little and his reflexes were slow. He was sloppy. It was a bad mistake. He pressed his broken ribs and grimaced.
Rahul works with a sliver of razor blade, which he hides in his mouth between cheek and lower gum. Using a broken match stick, he demonstrated how quickly he can manipulate the blade. With it, he slices open the satchels of affluent businessmen on trains while a partner holds a newspaper or canvas bag at the chest or neck of the victim, preventing his seeing.
“Show me,” Bob said, coming around Rahul and squatting beside him. Rahul was handed a newspaper and then demonstrated how quickly he could open a bag beneath the shield of the paper.
This is done while boarding or exiting trains so crowded that people can barely turn their heads, Rahul and the Inspector explained.
“Do you ever cut pockets with the blade?” Bob asked.
“No, only bags. But I know others who cut pockets. Two brothers, they always work together.”
“I want to talk to them. Where can I find them?” Desai asked.
“I don’t know,” Rahul said. He seemed afraid for a moment.
“Last question,” Bob said. “What will you do when you’re fifty?”
A Mumbai taxi
“I have a taxi medallion and badge. If I get the chance, I would like to ply the taxi on the road.” He paused. “But I do not think I will get the chance.”
It’s possible that Rahul works under an Indian mafia. Neither he nor the inspector suggested this, but other Indians who analyzed portions of this interview on video thought it was likely.
“Where there is big money there is mafia,” an Indian working in the security business told me. “Your pickpocket, he was afraid to talk about other thieves he knows. He didn’t want to tell the police inspector. And as to driving a taxi, probably the mafia will never let him quit the steal business. Your pickpocket will continue his work on the trains, I believe.”
In 2001, we spoke to this pickpocket in Mumbai, who'd been beaten by his victim.
While pickpocketing and bag snatching are said to be fairly common in Mumbai, Bob and I feel a visitor is less likely to become a victim there than in certain European cities.
Unless, that is, the visitor uses public transportation, where thieves practice all the common strategies plus a few creative twists of their own.
And unless the visitor happens to be robbed by snatch-and-grabbers on scooters, a nasty crime on the increase.
And unless the visitor experiences the human-leg-clamp robbery as experienced by our friend Paul McFarland just one year ago.
Otherwise, most victims of diversion theft are local commuters.
Mumbai police watch Bob Arno's video of pickpockets around the world.
Street crime in Mumbai
When we asked about pickpockets, a few Mumbai police officers tried the “good PR” approach. “We don’t have much pickpocketing,” they told us. “Mumbai is very safe. You can walk anywhere day or night. Married women wear mangalsutras, necklaces of pure gold. They are not afraid to wear them anywhere,” the cops said. Yet, the next day’s newspaper reported “man caught and beaten by witnesses after snatching a woman’s mangalsutra.” If witnesses are taking care of thieves on the spot, perhaps the police aren’t aware of the crimes?
We’d interviewed a pickpocket in Mumbai PD custody back in 2001. [Story coming soon.] He was trundled to us slumped in a wheelchair with a broken leg and broken ribs. Caught by his victim on a train, he’d been beaten to a pulp. That’s the way it’s done here, we’d been told.
Now Assistant Police Inspector Subhash Borate suggested that many Mumbai thieves suffer from drug addictions. He described a few local M.O.s:
A small part of the gorgeous Victoria Terminus train station in Mumbai, now called the Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
A long hook is fashioned from a steel bar. Thieves stand with it on the platform at the train station. As the train pulls out, the thief snags a bag or purse held by someone standing in the doorway of the crowded train. (This sounds strange to me, as if it might cause people to fall off the moving train.)
Beggar children clamp onto the legs and back of a victim so he can’t walk, while one rummages pockets. (Similar to the human-leg-clamp robbery mentioned above.)
Subhash also mentioned drink-drugging on trains and the trust-building of a person pretending a desire to practice his English with a foreign visitor.
When Bob suggested that poverty might be a motive for theft, the police officers countered that nobody needs to be unemployed in Mumbai. There’s work enough for anyone who wants it. We saw hiring signs in restaurant windows.
At Bob Arno's seminar at the Azad Maiden Police Station, video was projected onto a sheet taped to the wall.
Bob was to lecture about 70 Mumbai police officers on methods, motivation, and pre-incident body language. The day before the seminar, we were introduced to a 40-ish man in police custody. He’d previously served time for five assaults, a murder, and numerous robberies, and had been picked up again that morning. The barefoot prisoner was dragged in handcuffed to an officer. Bob questioned him through a Hindi translator, but the man was guarded and said little of substance.
Bob Arno questions a thief in custody.
Meanwhile, two television news crews materialized, and convinced Bob to steal in the streets for their cameras. Bob stole numerous items from the pockets and purses of people on the sidewalk. After each steal, four big television cameras converged on the victims and huge crowds grew—bigger than anyplace else. The victims had no idea their items had been taken, and their reactions were just what news correspondents live for.
Senior Police Inspector Bhawale presents Bob Arno and Bambi with a thank-you bouquet.
Bob’s conclusion was that, compared to the people of other countries, the Indians he stole from were more trusting. They did not react to Bob’s hands in their personal zone, and he was able to steal the belongings of many people very easily. Perhaps that’s because Mumbaikers are used to crowded situations. In some countries, Germany and Hong Kong, for example, the citizens are hardened and cynical. Perhaps too, that is why the locals continue to be the prime targets of thieves.
Huge crowds grew as Bob Arno stole from passers-by in Mumbai.
I read the post you did with my picture. It was very impressive. At the end you said a thief attached a skimmer in eight minutes. I just wanted to give you a small correction. We found that the one on the side of the gas pump drawer was attached in about 11 seconds, so if you add in opening the door, you’re looking at about 30 seconds (and that’s us fumbling with the key). So here’s the process: put the key in the lock, open the door, slide out the drawer, unplug the two cables from the gas pump connectors (keypad and reader cables), slap on the device, plug the two gas pump cables into the skimmer, plug the skimmer cables into the gas pump connectors, slide the drawer in, close the outside door, turn the key, remove it, test with a known credit card (outside the process of hooking the skimmer because anyone seeing you do that would assume you’ve doing something legitimate. Sounds like a lot, but look at a watch, close your eyes, and envision the process, then look at the watch and see what kind of time you get. It’ll probably amaze you. Now imagine practicing it a bit on your own gas pump either in your storage unit or living room or buddy’s gas pump. Now you’ve gotten faster and smoother, so you’re faster. See?
Thomas continues on the frightening trajectory of credit card fraud:
This type of crime used to be done strictly by hi-tech crews, but now we’re seeing it done by Joe and Julie the tweeker people (common street criminals), the traditional black crews who used to be just check passers and bust-out crooks, and the Hispanic immigrant groups who have always supplied ID documents (to name a few groups). There’s just so much money and property in this.
A hotel loyalty card and its data showing on a skimmer
I just asked for a warrant on a member of a group of rich college kids (who bought a $7,500.00 watch in a high end Fashion Show Mall store) who have been buying numbers skimmed from American hotel chains in Europe, then using that track data to make counterfeits (this is a good way to do it because the cards are from American customers and less likely to raise a red flag with the bank looking at the transaction since it’s used in the US), which they then use at stores here, in SoCal, and in Arizona. They then take the property and sell it. The kicker is that all these kids are Mexican nationals whose parents are so wealthy they have their kids going to school at American Universities.
Imagine the post office delivering your mail to a big open heap, mixed with the envelopes and boxes of 300 strangers. The honor-based system would have you pawing through the pile and taking just what’s yours. No one would guard the items; no one would check who took what.
Why not? The airlines do it. Nowadays, we even pay for that flawed, partial delivery system.
Airport luggage theft
Theft of luggage from airport baggage carousels is too easy. Yet another bag thief has been arrested for stealing luggage out of Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport. Excuse me—”suspected” bag thief. Phoenix Police say she’s been under surveillance since last September. I’m sure Zotter’s not the only baggage thief operating. Neither is Phoenix the only airport we need to worry about, though it may be particularly easy for thieves.
I wrote about luggage theft at Las Vegas McCarran Airport here, and about European and African airport thieves here.
Thief “JD” only pretends to steal luggage at baggage carousels. That’s his way of distracting tired travelers in order to get their wallets. “Right now, I can go to McCarran airport and go to baggage claim and beat some stings,” he says. “Because security is, evidently, lax, and the people are rushing to get their bags, and the bags are coming off the trolley. And when he’s stooping down to get his luggage— …˜Oh, is that mine, sir?’ Shake him up. …˜Oh, is this mine? It looks like mine.’ If you’re moving, and I got someone with me, and you’re in the airport, I’m going to play you. If I feel like I can work you I’m going to play you.”
I fly into Phoenix frequently, and into Las Vegas several times a month. Since bag tag checkers were removed ages ago, I’ve never seen any security at either airport.
Airlines are blamed for a tremendous amount of lost luggage. How often are they, too, the victims of these baggage thieves? It would be in their interest to band together and pay for a little security at the baggage carousels.
[dropcap letter=”Y”]ou look like a million dallahs,” the mugger leers at Bob Arno, his gold teeth glinting in the Panamanian sun. The dozen or so men who’d gathered around us nod and elbow one another.
Bob wears a polyester t-shirt over nylon shorts; acceptable on the tennis court, but otherwise, pretty shabby attire. He wears no jewelry, but his Cole Haan sneakers are pretty snappy. Is that it? The shoes? Or is it the pricey equipment he carries—a sleek video recorder and separate audio recorder?
When we find these gangsters, they appear to be defending their turf.
The mugger wears a spotless white t-shirt over a white wife-beater. Fancy, gold-accented sunglasses perch in his short hair. On his wrist, a circa 60s gold watch worth about a thou, give or take. A gangster with a flare for making just the right statement.
Our translator, Gustavo, chuckles nervously, though he’d assured us we were safe with him. As a former gangster himself, he knows, presumably, where his alliances lie. Which is not everywhere, as he was reluctant to walk with us down a street he deemed too dangerous, though it looked much like this street.
Colon gang leader Enrique
Muggers in Colon, Panama
Enrique, the mugger Bob and I are chatting up, is said to be the baddest of the bad guys. He also seems to be the smartest—and a take-charge kind of man. We started out talking to his fellow gangster Gilberto, but Enrique quickly took over, eagerly answering our questions. As if he really wants us to know what life is like for him and his neighbors.
No one in the neighborhood works, because there isn’t any work. Occasionally, a few of the men will get jobs on construction sites. Even Enrique. But the money from those jobs only lasts so long, and the men need money for their families. So they rob. They steal. They mug.
It’s simply the way of life in this part of Colon. Nothing to be ashamed of, nothing to hide from the children. In fact, we’re surrounded by children of every age as we question Enrique and Gilberto. Dozens of children.
Seeking a little privacy, we move the two gangsters and our translator to a nearby alley, but others follow, curious.
We’d started the interview by moving into a wide alley for privacy, where laundry flutters over a junked car. One by one and two by two, a crowd gathers. Mostly other adult men and small children, while women hang over balconies and push aside curtains at windows on the alley.
We’re in the heart of gangland. Brave and maybe stupid, we’re out of our water. At a shrill whistle, I break into a cold sweat. Fifty rival gangs patrol Colon; violence could erupt at any moment. Three a week are killed, we’re told, in gang fights. Three a week—wow.
I’m smiling till my cheeks hurt and my lips crack. Bob and I do a lot of smiling, mostly with the intent of disarming the thugs. We’re full of false confidence, hoping they can’t smell our fear. A defenseless city couple holding tasty electronic goodies like fish out of water. Like lost wildebeest surrounded by lions hiding in the grass.
People watch us from balconies all around us. Some dance. Quite a few men hold babies.
Like the rest of us, Enrique heads to the bank when he needs cash. But that’s where our methods differ. He lingers outside and waits for a flush customer to come out. He uses a gun when he needs to. The problem with robbing bank customers is the police, who tend to watch out for men like Enrique. So his second choice is robbing drug dealers, an activity fraught with deadlier dangers: the drug dealers carry guns. Oh, and there’s the odd tourist who wanders through town.
Enrique is clean-cut and thoughtful-looking, with a nice face. You can barely see the gangster tats peeking out of his t-shirt. He doesn’t look like a mugger, whatever a mugger is supposed to look like. He doesn’t look like the heartless, dangerous man he really is. Neither does Gilberto, a younger man with sad, wistful, distant eyes.
Bob Arno and Gilberto
Maybe this is unique to the Panamanian underworld. Angel, the pickpocket from Panama City, looks sweet but clueless. His pal Jaime has intelligent eyes in a handsome face. Both Dajanel and Jael, violent muggers in Colon, have faces you could put on a Disney badge. Even our translator Gustavo, granted, a former gangster, is positively radiant. My impression of Panamanian thieves does not include greed as an attribute. Nor do those I’ve met seem to be drug users or dealers. They just want enough to survive.
As Bob fires questions at Enrique and Gilberto, I marvel at the liveliness of the neighborhood. Music blasts from several sources. Girls on the street and on balconies dance to different beats. Six small children are now perched on the trunk of the parked car, beside and between Bob, Gilberto, and another man. They tap their fingers and toes to music as they listen to their fathers and uncles describe how they pull guns on people to get money.
Everybody\’s got a handgun in his pocket.
A handgun is suddenly pulled from a pocket and it startles me. The children who’d climbed up on the car are four to eight years old, but the gun is obviously nothing new to them. The point is, everybody’s got a gun in his pocket, even though it means five years in prison if they’re caught with one.
I ask Enrique if he mugs women. He hesitates, then looks embarrassed when he says yes. If her purse looks heavy, if she looks like she’s got money, he’ll mug a woman. There’s no respect. It’s all about the money.
Across the street from our interview, another decaying building alive with people.
Gustavo finally alludes to his criminal past and prison term. No surprise. He belongs to the government-sponsored company of former gangsters turned tourist guides. His work, when he gets it, usually consists of taking tourists out to the Gatun Locks in the Canal, or to the mall, or to beaches. He’s paid $23 for each day he works, usually two days a week.
Gustavo is decidedly beefier than his gangster pals, and I guess it has to do with his steady income, meager though it is. Later, Gustavo introduced us to yet another former gangster, now a respected office worker for the department of immigration. He has both an email address and a fat belly—signs of success. We also meet a few people wearing braces on their teeth. How can they afford it?, I ask Gustavo. They don’t need braces, he scoffs. It’s just a fashion.
It’s disconcerting to be completely encircled by curious onlookers in a neighborhood like this one.
By the time we finish our interviews, some 40 people have gathered round us. The adults stand quietly, politely, crowding in close. The children play, observe us, and mug for our cameras. No one scolds the little ones when they climb some rusty scaffold or run into the street. Tangles of razor wire dangle ominously, and sewers loom without grates. These are wimpy dangers in this neighborhood. Rival gangsters might come around the corner at any moment. The slightest infractions justify killing: You looked at my girlfriend. I want those shoes.
We hear a siren, but it’s probably the nearby fire station. The police only show up after gunfights, they tell us. They only come to pick up the bodies.
Bob has more to say about muggers, Panama, and our experience there. Stay tuned.
All this hearsay, lately, about pickpockets and theft on planes. Even a celebrity-son helped himself to sleeping passengers’ valuables.
Pickpockets are everywhere, and that includes airports, airplanes, and especially luggage carousels. Only you are responsible for the security of your stuff. Here’s what a thief told me, in pickpocket-lingo:
The Stick, the Shade, and the Wire
“JD” an American whiz player, travels to all the top sporting events in the United States. His favorite tool is a garment bag which he calls his shade, a prop to hide his theft of a sting, or a wallet. Dressed in a suit from the wardrobe he’s proud of, he flies to his destination penniless. He described his recent trip to Las Vegas.
“I made $900 coming out of the airport. When the plane lands, I start work. I got to get my money to get out of McCarran airport. Play strictly on skill, that’s how I play—on the plane. Yeah, plane lands, people have their arms up getting their bags. See my man, get up on him, pow, I spank him, off the front leg.
“It was a pappy—a man—right? He got a sting—a wallet—in the front slide, but he also got cash. I played this for his credit card. I got a guy with me we call a writer. He writes the work, writes the spreads. He’s a stick—what you call a stall, what we call a stickman writer. He’s stick and shade. I do the wire. The wire is the one who takes. We split up when we get on the plane, he gets in the back and I get in the front.
“Right now, I can go to McCarran airport and go to baggage claim and beat some stings. Because security is, evidently, lax, and the people are rushing to get their bags, and the bags are coming off the trolley, and I got my garment bag ….
“And when he’s stooping down to get his luggage— …˜Oh, is that mine, sir?’ Shake him up. …˜Oh, is this mine? It looks like mine.’ If you’re moving, and I got someone with me, and you’re in the airport, I’m going to play you. If I feel like I can work you I’m going to play you.
Airborne Victim
“Kayla,” a 15-year-old girl, told me how her wallet was stolen on a cross-country flight. Her mother and sister supported Kayla’s story. The thief was a 35ish woman sitting next to her. In the middle of the flight, the woman bent down and pretended to be digging in her purse. But Kayla felt something and looked, and could see that the woman was digging in her (Kayla’s) purse.
Kayla said she was too scared to say anything. The woman got up and went to the bathroom. Kayla checked her purse and found that her wallet was gone. She told her mother. Then she and her mother told a flight attendant. The flight attendant found the wallet in the bathroom, missing only Kayla’s cash. Kayla was still too afraid to say anything to the thief. When the plane landed, the woman just left.
Take Precautions
Is theft on planes a risk worth worrying about? I don’t think so. Then again, if you’re the unlucky victim of a flying filcher, you’ll be plenty pissed. If you sleep, that tiny possibility is there. Even if you don’t sleep, do you know what’s being rummaged above your head? On some planes, a thief could reach behind his feet to access the bag under his seat.
What to do? Just make it more difficult for the casual thief. Bury your valuables within your bags. Use little locks on your carry-ons. Put your bags in the bin zipper down, or with the opening to the back of the bin. (Yeah, I know, wheels in first, they say.) Use the bin across from you, so you have a chance of looking if someone opens it.
Do I do all those things? Can you completely prevent theft on planes? Nope. But you can make your stuff much more difficult to access than the next person’s.
If you’re a heavy sleeper, or like to close your eyes and disappear under earphones, as I do, there’s not much you can do short of sitting on your stuff. Still, I’d be more concerned at a sporting event or concert, than aboard an airplane. JD makes a great living stealing wallets from people in crowds. And he’s still out there.
