X-ray glasses

No more Flamenco on La Rambla.

High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
Chapter One, part-g, Travel Advisory—

No more Flamenco on La Rambla.
No more Flamenco on La Rambla.

Barcelona, a fusion of passion and creativity, chaos and order, where art is in every detail, is a living laboratory of street crime. It’s one of our favorite places in which to study this bizarre subculture, and it supports a great diversity of practitioners from the various branches of thievery. With patience and practice, the keen-eyed observer will be rewarded with abundant examples of pickpocketing, bag snatching, and three-shell games.

La Rambla is the marvelous Main Street of Barcelona. The crowds swirl doing La Rambla things. There is incredibly much to look at: the Dr. Seuss-like architecture of Antoni Gaudi, caricature artists at work, caged doves cooing, couples performing the tango, living statues, musicians, puppeteers, intoxicating flower shops, and tempting cafés offering tapas, paella, and sangria. One can’t help but be caught up in it all.

On duty, Bob and I saunter and prowl, observant and suspicious. It’s the height of summer and the crowds are thick as—well, thick as thieves. We’re hypertuned to inappropriate behavior; suspects pop out of the crowd as if they have TV-news graphic circles drawn around them. One of us merely has to say “ten o’clock” and the other glances slightly left and knows exactly who, of the hundreds in view, is meant.

What are those pop-art pictures called, the wallpaper-like fields of swirly pattern that, when stared at long enough finally push forward an object or scene? Stereograms, I think. Blink, and the object disappears into the repetition of the pattern. Likewise our suspects: with concentration, we force them to materialize out of sameness into a dimension all their own.

But in two ways, they easily return to the background. First, we may lose them: they’re too fast; they turn a corner; they duck into an alley we don’t want to enter; or we turn our attention elsewhere. Second, their behavior is suddenly validated: for example, a fast moving pair of men looking left and right, darting ahead of clusters, purpose in their pace and us on their tail, eventually catch up to their wives. Perfectly innocent! In Venice, in Lima, in Barcelona, we wasted energy observing the bizarre behavior of deviants who turned out to be perverts. They just wanted to rub up against women, not pick their purses. Once, we tracked a pair of plainclothes police. Sure, we follow lots of dead ends-just as directors audition endless rejects.
©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

One man

How pickpockets work
Pickpocket Luciano's fingers.
Pickpocket Luciano’s fingers.

High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
Chapter One, part-f, Travel Advisory —

One man loses his wallet. It’s a small crime, a small loss, a small inconvenience. Or maybe it’s a huge loss, devastating, with trickle-down repercussions.

One man steals a wallet. Usually, he steals three to six of them each day. And so may his peers, possibly hundreds in his own city. That’s a lot of wallets, a lot of money, inconvenience, and tears. Small crime, enormous problem.

Awareness works wonders.

Bob and I are on a mission. From a pro-active angle, we teach travelers what to beware of, how theft happens, and how to protect themselves. Our jurisdiction is the world: as we roam and research, we’re informed by local law enforcement, innumerable victims, and the thieves themselves.

At the end of our second interview with Luciano, he had a query for us.

“Why do you ask these questions?”

“To help tourists avoid pickpockets.”

“But,” he deadpanned, “that will make my job harder.”

Exactly.

We also assist law enforcement. No police department has the budget to travel and gather intelligence at street level, as we do. Trends travel, as do perpetrators. As Bob and I acquire video of street thieves and con artists from Lima to Lisbon, from Barcelona to Bombay, we put together teaching tapes and show them to law enforcement agencies worldwide. Having seen our previews, cops are better-prepared when foreign M.O.s roll into town.

Even at a local level we’re able to help police forces. Rarely — or never — does standard police-issue equipment include hidden video cameras. Bob and I, who look nothing like law enforcement, are able to get in the faces of thieves-in-action, and often provide the best, if not the only, descriptions of local criminal pests. We provided photos to the Barcelona tourist police, for example, who had received numerous reports of a devilish thief who “wore shorts.” Yep. That’s all the victims could ever describe about him. The police were ecstatic when they received our shot of his mug.

We do much of our research in summer, in the height of tourist season. We put ourselves smack where the crowds are, just as the thieves do. We carry video cameras, just as the tourists do. Then it’s a game of eyes.

The tourists gawk at the sights, common sense abandoned. The thief has head bent, eyes downcast; he’s scanning pockets and purses. Bob and I stare at the thief — but not too much. We don’t want to blow our cover.

©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

An ordinary day in the center of Rome

"The Heaven-to-Hell-Express." Bus 64, in Rome, travels between the Vatican and and the Termini bus station. It carries a dynamic mix of clergy, tourists, and pickpockets.

High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
Chapter One, part-e, Travel Advisory —

"The Heaven-to-Hell-Express." Bus 64, in Rome, travels between the Vatican and and the Termini bus station. It carries a dynamic mix of clergy, tourists, and pickpockets.
“The Heaven-to-Hell-Express.” Bus 64, in Rome, travels between the Vatican and and the Termini bus station. It carries a dynamic mix of clergy, tourists, and pickpockets.

A somber crowd was gathered outside the police station. While Bob helped a Japanese tourist file a report inside, I interviewed the congregation of victims.
Mary from Akron was waiting with her daughter while her husband told his sad story upstairs. Her husband’s wallet had been stolen on bus 64. Mary still had her cash and credit cards, so she was rather jolly about the loss. The family was scheduled to go home the next day, anyway.

“We’d been warned about these nuisance kids,” Mary admitted, “but my husband is just too kind. He knew they were close but he wouldn’t shoo them away. Poor Wilma here, though, she never had a chance.”

Wilma from Tampa had just arrived that morning. She and her husband had flown into Rome and taken the airport express train to the city. They’d been hit at the airport train station.

“This was no kid!” Wilma spat out angrily. “It was a man, a regular Italian man.”

“Take it easy, honey,” Mary patted Wilma on the back.

“He lifted my husband’s suitcase onto the train for us, then came back down to get mine. Before I could even thank him he was gone.”

Wilma had fresh tears in her eyes. Mary rubbed and patted her arm.

“In that instant, he got the wallet from my husband’s pocket and the purse from my tote bag. He got all our money, all our credit cards, our airline tickets home, and our passports.” Wilma was crying now. “We have nothing,” she whimpered, “not even the name of our hotel.”

“Sure you do, sweetheart,” Mary soothed her. “It’s going to be all right. I gave her $100,” Mary explained to me. “They had absolutely nothing.”

These two women had only just met, here at the police station half an hour ago. Now they were sisters of misfortune.

I turned to two young men who had been silently slumped against their backpacks, listening.

“They got him on the bus, too.” the blond one said. He sounded like a Swede.

“Where were you?” I asked.

“In the back,” the other said.

“I mean, where was the bus?”

“Oh. Bus 64, like her. At the Vatican.”

“And you guys?” Another family had appeared.

“Outside the Coliseum.”
©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent

Shocking statistics

Tourists distracted by street entertainment are ripe pickings.
Tourists distracted by street entertainment are ripe pickings.

Every single summer day, one hundred tourists will be pickpocketed near the Coliseum in Rome; another hundred will be hit near the Spanish Steps, and another hundred in and around the Vatican. These three hundred individuals will report their thefts to the local police stations. Three hundred more victims will not file a report, for lack of time, late discovery, or other reasons. Florence reports similar numbers. So do London, Barcelona, Paris, Prague, and numerous other favorite tourist destinations. Multiplied by the number of days in the tourist season, dollars in currency lost, hours of vacation ruined, aggravation, humiliation, hassle, and havoc, you can see that pickpocketing is a small crime with huge repercussions.

Numbers are difficult to obtain, but as far as can be measured, they’re going up: “Among violent crimes, robbery showed the greatest increase, 3.9 percent … and larceny-theft increased 1.4 percent” says the FBI’s “Crime Trends, 2001 Preliminary Figures.” While that’s not a very impressive increase, anecdotal evidence indicates otherwise.

It’s estimated that at least half of all pickpocketing incidents are never reported at all. Of those reported, most, according to a New York cop on the pickpocket detail who wishes to remain unnamed, fall into the “lost property” category. “They don’t even realize they’ve been pickpocketed,” he said. “They think they just lost it.” Incidents reported as thefts are lumped under one of several legal descriptions. Larceny is the unlawful taking of property from the possession of a person, and includes pickpocketing, purse-snatching, shoplifting, bike theft, and theft from cars. Robbery is the same but involves the use or threat of force. The theft of a purse or wallet, therefore, may fall into either of these categories, and usually cannot be extracted for statistical purposes. Similarly, the figures collected under larceny or robbery include offenses this book does not specifically address; shoplifting, for example.

In Europe, where the theft of cell phones has skyrocketed, numbers help propel industry changes—the development of security devices in phones, for example. 11,000 cell phones were stolen in the Czech Republic in the first eight months of 2001. More than 20,000 cell phones were stolen in the city of Paris in 2000.

In September 2000, British Transport Police reported a 94.6 percent increase in pickpocketing on the London Tube, and pickpocketing on the streets rose by almost 30 percent in the same period. Spain experienced a 19.5 percent increase over the course of 2001, and street robbery was up 28 percent in England. In Paris, pickpocketing on the underground metro jumped 40 percent in 2001.

Frightening new trends are developing. What were simple snatches are lately turning into brutal grabs resulting in serious injury or death. Perhaps it’s the stiff competition from a glut of pickpockets that is turning some to violent methods. Strangulation from behind is one terrifying method. Another involves squirting flammable liquid on the back of a target’s jacket and igniting it. The victim throws down her bag and struggles to get the flaming jacket off while the thief grabs the bag and flees. Even ordinary bag snatches are becoming deadly, with victims being pulled to the ground, some cracking their heads on the pavement, or falling into traffic.

Excerpt from Travel Advisory: How to Avoid Thefts, Cons, and Street Scams
Chapter One: High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere

© Copyright 2008-2012 Bambi Vincent. All rights reserved.

Bottomfeeders of the criminal hierarchy

Luciano Barattolo, a pickpocket who works on trams and buses.

High and Dry on the Streets of Elsewhere
Chapter One, part-c, Travel Advisory

Luciano Barattolo, a pickpocket who works on trams and buses.
Luciano Barattolo, a pickpocket who works on trams and buses.

Bob and I hit the ground and I squinted at the gang.

“Luciano!” I said to one of the culprits as the tram trundled off. I recognized him as a pickpocket we’d interviewed four years ago.

“No, no Luciano,” he said, shaking his head. He backed away.

“Si, Luciano Barattolo, I remember you.” Luciano bent and fiddled with a window squeegee in a bucket of water abandoned on the median strip. He removed the dripping squeegee and touched it to the toe of each of his shoes. I got ready for a blast of filthy water; I was sure he was going to fling it at us.

Head still bent, he peeked up at me through the corner of his eye, dropped the squeegee, and bolted.

After more than a decade prowling city streets around the world, we’d become accustomed to finding known criminals freely plying their trade right out in the open. Here was Luciano, still out lifting wallets on trams despite police and public awareness of him. You’d think he’d be put away by now.

It’s a contentious political issue: law enforcement budget versus taxes, penal code versus perpetrator’s rights, unemployment, immigration. Same story in most of the world’s major cities and, therefore, street thieves abound, free to prey on the weakest, richest resource: the tourist. From a busy prosecutor’s perspective, or an overworked judge’s, or even an underpaid beat cop’s, pickpocketing is a pretty insignificant issue. Real bad guys are on the loose: murderers, kidnappers, rapists, drug-pushers. How much of a police force should be diverted to snag the bottomfeeders of the criminal hierarchy?

Most countries blame illegal immigrants from poorer nations nearby. “We can’t get rid of them,” said Inspector D’Amore Vincenzo, a frustrated policeman in Milan, Italy. “When they’re caught without work cards, we give them 15 days to leave the country. Then they are released and what happens? They just don’t leave! And if they have no papers, no passports, the countries they come from will not accept the repatriation of these people.”

The problem may seem small. One man loses his wallet, his money, his driver’s license, his credit cards. So what? But it’s not one man. In Westminster–that’s one small district of London–768 cases of pickpocketing were recorded in June 2002. That’s just June. Just one small section of the city of London. And only the reported incidents. How many victims did not file a report? And by the way, the figure doesn’t include the 142 bag snatches recorded in the same district in the same period.

Luciano paused a couple blocks away, having finally dredged up the memory of us from four years ago. He was 49 now, but still looked 30. He raised his children on a career of pickpocketing, and now was spoiling five grandchildren. Over lunch, he told us how he and his partners used legal loopholes to stay in the game.

“If the police catch us with a tool, they are angry and beat us up. If we don’t have a tool and they see us they just say …˜leave, get out of here.'”

“What’s a tool?”

“A razor blade, for example. Or some use long tweezers to slip into a back pocket.” Luciano’s eyes scanned the sidewalk café for listening ears. “A scissors is a good tool,” he whispered. “A scissors is okay to carry. With scissors I can cut a pocket and let the wallet fall into my hand.”

Luciano makes it sound easy. He and his ilk hit on moving targets in tight spaces, then fade away into churning crowds. It’s a universal style. Police throw up their hands. “We must see the hand in the pocket!” they cry. “We have only six in our squad for all the city.” “Our officers don’t know what to look for.” “It’s impossible!”

The pickpockets aren’t about to stop.

“I started doing it to eat, to get food, because there were no jobs. Now it’s all I know,” Luciano told us. Others steal to support drug problems, or have no legal status to work, or simply believe in taking what they want.
©copyright 2000-2008. All rights reserved. Bambi Vincent