St. Petersburg— The beefiest of the five Mongolian thugs shoved his fist in front of Bob’s face, thrust forward his chin, and stared. Bob stared back and so did I. Two more brutes joined the first. One pointed to our camera and said “No!” The other swept his hand as in “get out of here, scram!”
Experienced at this sort of confrontation, we didn’t back down. That doesn’t mean we weren’t nervous and aware of the danger. We’ve been threatened before, not to mention spat upon and mooned. But pickpockets, by our own definition, are nonviolent. Sure, there are the unpredictable drug addicts desperate for money for a fix, but these five fixed us with alert and stone-cold eyes. They did not look harmless.
We’d spotted two of the gang within minutes of reaching Nevsky Prospekt, the broad boulevard of St. Petersburg. They stood on the corner of what might be the city’s busiest intersection, where tourists get their first glimpse of the magnificent Church on the Spilled Blood, a subway station upchucks clotted streams of humans, and tinny, battery-operated speakers screech the muffled pitches of Russian barkers selling canal cruises.
We picked the pair out of the crowd as we crossed the street toward them. They crossed and passed us, then u-ied and immediately separated, one in front, one behind us. The Russian sandwich. Instead of worry, we felt glee. Bob had a prop wallet stuffed with newspaper in his back pocket. Bait.
As Bob and I paused outside the subway station, the crew ditched us, ducked inside, and came out following a tourist. Bob managed to snap two blatant frames with a camera, one of which shows the gang leader looking straight into the lens as a partner shields a backpack for another’s grope.
Did they get anything? We don’t know because, as always, the thieves cover their moves. But a moment later…
In a quick visit to Rome last month, Bob and I found it pretty quiet on the streets, theft-wise. Granted, we only spent a few hours on the prowl, but given our 15 years experience thiefhunting in Rome, we know where to look. We usually find an eclectic mix of Italian, Roma, North African, and East European thieves, plus many we don’t speak to, many who won’t tell, and many who lie.
On this visit, we spent at least half an hour shadowing a mixed-gender threesome halfheartedly preying. As they trudged along the tourist trail, one of their members entered each souvenir shop along the way and stood among the customers. Another spent time among the postcard stands. They were an extraordinarily scruffy group, whose appearance certainly limits their access and proximity to targets. After a lethargic effort, they disbanded at a bus stop. We engaged two of them as they scattered, and learned that they were Polish.
Other than this group, we saw very few “suspects” in the Metro, on Bus 64, hanging around at the usual favorite bus stops, or on the streets. Termini, the main train station, was littered with dodgy characters, as usual, but we didn’t linger, preferring to survey the scene outside the station.
Are Italians finally fed up enough to do something about crime? At least crime committed by immigrants, it seems. A couple of telling surveys reported in The Guardian hint to a new, anti-immigrant climate in Italy, and especially anti-Gypsy.
81% of Italian respondents said they found all Gypsies, Romanian or not, “barely likeable or not likeable at all”, a greater number than the 64% who said they felt the same way about non-Gypsy Romanians.
and
Romanians were among the 268 immigrants rounded up in a nationwide police crackdown on prostitution and drug dealing this week, after new prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s likening of foreign criminals to “an army of evil”.
Word has been out on the street for some time. “Jaga” and Ana, a Romanian pickpocket couple we interviewed at length in Rome in 2003, told us they were planning to move to Spain, where it is easier to live and to conduct their business. They are not the only thieves to express this sentiment, which helps explain why Spain has such a preponderance of pickpockets.
Pisa, too, was empty of the sticky-fingered women and children we usually find at the train station, bus station, and all around the Piazza del Duomo. Locals there said they had noticed the pickpockets’ disappearance about a month ago.
But just when we thought Italy might be cracking down on crime, we heard last month’s terrible story of the American couple served drugged cappuccino in a Rome train station, where they were then robbed. Upon awaking, the man stumbled onto the tracks and was killed by a train. The article continues:
Gangs using narcotic spray to carry out train robberies are also on the rise in Italy, police said. The gangs board sleeper trains and drug passengers in couchettes before hopping off at stations with valuables.
I tend to think the crime lull we sensed in our short survey of Rome’s previous hot spots was actually an anomaly. Or the balloon has been squeezed and the thieves are just elsewhere. I hope that we soon find another opportunity to re-investigate Rome.
Sadly, though, porcini season will be over by our next visit. There is nothing like porcini pizza, especially in Pisa.
I can thank the Parsis for my passion for photojournalism.
Another man might have turned away, but when I saw a vulture picking the limbs of a dead child, I raised my camera. Perhaps that says more about me than I should reveal.
Instead of burning their dead and feeding the ashes to the River Ganges as Hindus do, Parsis lay the bodies of their dead on a grid suspended over a high tower. To attract vultures to the burial tower, corpses are smeared with rancid animal fat. The scavenger birds pick away the flesh and the cleaned bones then fall onto the earth, lime, and charcoal floor of the tower to decompose into the soil. How I came to witness this alien rite was through the same set of circumstances that so profoundly impacted my career.
At twenty I hadn’t yet decided whether to become an entertainer or a photographer. My true passion was travel, and the more off-beat and distant the destination, the better. To fund my expeditions, I took engagements as a performer for four to six weeks in faraway countries, and at the end of the gigs I would trek into surrounding villages and countryside.
Performing in the Far East in the sixties gave me a unique opportunity to visit cities that I otherwise would never have had a chance to visit for such extended periods. While my craving for photojournalistic excitement was supported by my show income, I made an effort to meet local authorities and make the right contacts intending to pursue photojournalism with a bent toward the absurd.
Bob Arno’s path to pickpocketing
Even way back then my show was unusual—pickpocketing had never been seen as entertainment. It was my ticket to the exotic destinations most people only dream of. And on my journeys I witnessed, sometimes inadvertently, headline news. Neither ordinary tourists nor visiting journalists could have had such easy access to behind-the-scenes briefings. For I was tied to the U.S. Military.
Bob Arno, 24
I had always had a strange desire to capture macabre images with a camera. It started as a hobby, then became a semi-profession during my first journey to Asia. In 1961 I toured Pakistan, India, Thailand, Malaysia, Laos, Vietnam, Hong Kong, and Japan as an inexperienced entertainer. I augmented my performance salary by taking freelance photography assignments in locations where Western photographers were still a bit of a rarity.
The world was hungry for unusual stories from Asia then. As a young and raw journalist with little comprehension of the underlying political issues of the area, I came face to face with the dramatic events of the day. Being in the right place at the right time was at the heart of my earliest photojournalistic adventures.
With the beginning of the war in Vietnam, U.S. forces were building steadily in the Far East. These were the darkest years of the Cold War and the fear was of China’s involvement in the Indo-Chinese conflict. Everyone was concerned about the war escalating and spilling over into the Philippines, Thailand, and Korea. The large U.S. bases in the Philippines, Taiwan, Thailand, Okinawa, and Japan all needed entertainment for the troops.
Most of my performance engagements then were for these American soldiers. My comedy pickpocketing was new and different and audience participation was always a hit. I had long contracts on the military bases, as well as in the civilian clubs—camouflaged girlie-joints, really—which attracted the soldiers. It was this environment which fueled my taste for absurd and offbeat news stories.
Photographers in those early years of the conflict hung out together in the hotel bars of Saigon. That’s how I met Larry Burrows, a British war-journalist who worked for Life magazine and was one of the most-awarded photographers to come out of the Vietnam war. Burrows helped me gain contacts in Saigon, both with the American military command and with the opposing factors. Without leads and the contacts you wouldn’t get “the story.”
It was because of Larry Burrows that I was one of only five photographers in Saigon who were privy to the intelligence-leak that a monk was about to commit suicide. An immolation was to occur in the early hours of June 11, 1963, at a compound outside Saigon in front of a few select journalists. The Bhuddist leaders orchestrating the sacrifice schemed that the global reaction to the front-page photos of the monk setting himself on fire would create an anti-war movement. The goal was to speed up peace negotiations.
At three in the morning, we photographers were rushed from the hotel out to the compound. The unlucky monk who had been selected for the sacrifice had already been drugged into a semi-comatose state and sat on the ground. As soon as the media were ready with their cameras, other monks poured petrol over the “victim,” and he was then set alight. We let our Nikon motordrives spin throughout the ordeal and the resulting pictures, mine included, created enormous impact and news coverage in all major newspapers around the world.
[EDIT 1/2/13: See comments below for Bob Arno’s elucidation on this experience.]
My first photo essay was from Pakistan where I shot the story on the Parsis and their infamous Towers of Silence. Their disposal of the dead isn’t so gruesome when you understand their belief in preserving the purity of fire, water, earth, and air. So as not to pollute these elements, they will not burn, bury, or sink their dead. Still, mine were morbid photos by an immature photographer. It wasn’t the historical perspective of the burial rituals which sold the story, but the stark and grisly images of vultures ripping limbs from human corpses.
In similar stark but shallow style, I photographed Hindu cremations at the burning ghats in Benares on the Ganges River, morning bathing rituals in the Ganges in Calcutta, opium dens in northern Thailand, the Bridge at River Kwaii, faith healers in the Philippines, and leper colonies in India.
One particular photo project had a strong impact on my career path. The story was on beggars and pickpockets accosting foreign visitors in Karachi. This was my introduction to a cynical distraction method based on sympathy and compassion. The pickpockets were lepers, and they were exploiting pity for profit.
In the early sixties leprosy was still a serious threat to the populations of India and Pakistan. It was common to see sufferers in various stages of deterioration roaming the streets of Karachi, Calcutta, Bombay, and New Delhi. Banding together, they often surrounded Western visitors coming out of banks, hotels, and churches. The sight of an outstretched hand with missing or rotting fingers usually caused people to react with horror and drop some coins, if for no other reason to get the infected limbs to go away. Compassion and revulsion metamorphosed into currency. The ploy was effective, diabolical, and unique to Pakistan and the Indian subcontinent.
My story showed a team of lepers who specialized in pickpocketing under the guise of begging. While one tugged at the left side of the mark and held out his diseased hand for baksheesh, his accomplice on the mark’s right fanned—softly felt for the wallet. When the victim looked left, aghast at the touch of such ravaged hands, his reaction would be a sudden jerk to the right to get away from the loathsome encounter. The partner on the right would lift his wallet in that moment of abrupt contact.
This was the most primitive of survival instincts, where rules of civility, shame, and respect didn’t apply. Just raw confrontation between the haves and the have-nots. I was only 22 years old when I first witnessed this subterfuge, and I was both stunned and fascinated. Stunned at the callousness of using the primeval emotion, fear, to accomplish distraction. Fascinated by the realization that there were people so desperate they would go to any extent to find money to survive for the next couple of days. It was a rude awakening for a youth raised in the privileged shelter of socialist Sweden.
Watching this base encounter is what inspired my lifelong effort to document, and to unravel, the mind-games which nearly always attend pickpocketing. I was intrigued by the fact that wit was as much a part of it as was technique. This is what challenged me to explore the criminal mind. Pickpocketing is not an activity that one only practices now and then. It’s a daily routine performed several times in a fairly short time span. It’s an intense crime based on dexterity and, equally important, on psychological analysis of the opponent. A good pickpocket must be able to read many signals and make an instant decision on whether to go for the poke or wait for a better opportunity.
I was also intrigued, in those early years, by the cleverness of the set-up. Although the theatrical theft of a wallet on stage is entirely different from lifting one in the street, the principles of distraction are the same. By studying the real thieves, I realized I could incorporate their techniques into my performance. I began a fanatical collection of stratagems, always on the lookout for the clever, devious, cunning, slick, duplicitous, ingenious, innovative, inventive, and creative new trick.
Much later in my career, exactly thirty years later, I would find that the lepers’ technique—begging on one side of a victim, pickpocketing on the other—was nearly identical to the methods used by thieving gangs in southern Europe today.
Another pivotal moment arrived for me that same year in India when I realized that gangs of beggars and pickpockets usually worked under controlling leaders. Not protectors or father-figures to homeless children, these leaders were brutal mutilators who intentionally crippled children in order to make them better beggars, allotted them territories, and demanded daily payments from them. My discovery of this grim reality was the spark that fired my quest to find, understand, and expose the manipulators’ deception.
From Indian beggars to east European gypsy families to American inner-city street toughs to North African pickpockets to Colombian tricksters, I have always asked this question: how did you learn your trade? Was it passed down within the family? Was it learned in prison? Was destitution the motivator?
For more than forty years a rumor has been whispered among police forces in America that an organized school for pickpockets exists. The School of the Seven Bells is said to graduate a certified pickpocket when he can steal from all the pockets of a man’s suit while it hangs on a mannequin, without ringing little warning bells tied to the clothes. A pickpocket in Cartegena told us that the school is nestled high in the mountains of Colombia. An American cop told us of a variation in Chicago, in which razor blades buried in the suit pockets replace the bells. And yet I have never spoken to a policeman who has succeeded in getting any detail from detained pickpockets about the school. Perhaps it is mere myth. My search continues.
One of the most common questions people ask me after they’ve seen my lecture or one of our documentaries on con games is how I got so interested in tracking criminals. The easy answer is that one thing led to another: stage pickpocketing to observing street thieves to adapting their tricks for the stage. But that denies the force of my own personality in steering my expedition through life. It’s far more difficult to define the eccentric quirk in my psyche that attracted me to deceit, deception, and double-dealing—but always on the right side of law and morality. I am fascinated by confidence games and have the great fortune to enjoy my interest as my career.
In my younger years, my trio of passions—travel, photography, and entertaining—seemed to be in conflict; I thought an inevitable choice would have to be made. Maybe I never grew up. I still travel the world non-stop and I still love it. I’m still deeply involved in photography, though it has mostly evolved into videography. And I am still a full-time entertainer working theaters and private corporate events around the world. I’m having a blast. How lucky can one man be?
What’s more charming than a leisurely break at an outdoor café? Coffee, a beer, a glass of wine, maybe lunch… You chat with friends and watch the people-parade, safe within the lush green walls separating you from the commotion and concerns of traffic and humanity. A cool oasis with a feeling of privacy and exclusivity—at least to some level.
This is where a great number of bag thefts occur, thanks to that false sense of security one naturally gets from the perimeter of potted plants. Thieves may use a special tool or a mangled wire hanger to snag a purse or backpack from between the planters. The use of a tool allows them to pierce your private sphere without setting off your personal alarm system. The most popular sites for this M.O. are right beside a subway entrance or other easy getaway—a gateway to disappear with the swag.
Thankfully, restaurants are beginning to counteract with simple preventative measures. This summer I’ve noticed many café perimeters reinforced with wooden lathing, chicken wire, or bigger planters close together.
Barcelona, Spain—They look like any ordinary girls, right? Walking down La Rambla, tossing their long braids, empty hands swinging casually. We only saw this view of them, from the back. So what made us perk up? What raised our antennas?
It was evening. We followed them on La Rambla for a minute or two, then they made a beeline to a trash can on the edge of the street. Peering into the can, the shorter girl reached in and extracted a perfect piece of cardboard. Perfect for her needs, anyway. Bob and I looked at each other. That was all we needed to see. The game was on.
The girls entered the elegant Plaça Reial, a beautiful plaza lined with outdoor cafés. The restaurants are first class, but the plaza’s loiterers can be pretty seedy. The girls entered with practice and purpose, turning to the right and walking quickly around the entire perimeter, right along the occupied tables. Bob and I split, so if one of us was spotted, the other could still film.
They walked around and around, eyes always on the tables, at times stopping to watch a particular table of diners. At some point the short girl gave her cardboard to her partner. She then wandered until she found a new suitable “tool” for herself, what looked like a take-away menu. She returned to the other girl, and they continued scouting.
I shouldn’t really call them girls. They looked young, but these two are women—not that I would hazard a guess of their ages.
When the pair noticed an opportunity, they strolled up to a table full of people. They casually laid their shield tools on the table, then seemed to have a little chat with the diners. Bob and I were both too far away to know what happened. The women lingered a while, then left. Bob or I should have approached the people at the table, but we didn’t. I don’t remember why we didn’t, but now I miss the information we might have gained. In any case, this is classic behavior, which we have seen over and over. Perhaps we were a bit bored with it.
The two prowled about the square, then plopped down on the edge of the fountain. Bob sat opposite them, observing. The fountain scene looked ordinary: people relaxing, admiring, resting, chatting. No one would have suspected the spy vs. spy game in progress. Or—were there more games going on around the fountain? Which other ordinary loungers had ulterior motives? We’d never know.
The women looked tired, bored, and defeated. They made another halfhearted round or two of the plaza, then meandered out. The light was fading. Bob and I, too, were tired, after successive days of beating the pavement. We had dinner reservations. So we left.
We did not see this pair steal, but they appeared to be practicing a laid-back, easy-going version of the M.O. of the boy postcard thief, and similar to Kharem’s style. Although they looked bored and tired, they also seemed to be comfortable and experienced, if not proficient.
These are all expanded uses of the old gypsy cardboard routine, which is still widely in use. Yes, we saw that trick, too. The woman pictured is using cardboard, but just as often, the shield is a piece of newspaper or a map. In Russia, they used puzzles, already put together and glued onto board, which they pretended to offer for sale. They were very, very good with those puzzles, and under them, too.
Barcelona, Spain—We’re walking along Carrer de Ferran, a block off La Rambla. Instead of paying attention to the street scene, I’m looking for a wine shop. Ana is cooking dinner for us and we’re already anticipating the cozy evening. (Dinner turned out to include a sensational artichoke risotto, the cheesy sort that begs for overindulgence.)
So we’re ambling among the eclectic mob on Ferran when half a block ahead I notice a boy unfurl a piece of paper. It could have been a folded brochure or magazine page. He unfurls it with purpose, turns and walks toward me, but on the other side of the street. He’s got my attention. In a few seconds, he reaches the bar directly across the street from me, where people sit behind small tables at the open front. The boy lays his paper on top of a table, waits half a beat, then picks up his paper and scuttles back to the corner where I first noticed him. I see an empty spot on the table.
I grab Bob, who is ten feet ahead of me. “Postcard thief,” I say, “let’s follow!” I don’t mean someone who steals postcards. I’m referring to the method Kharem demonstrated years ago.
Meanwhile, the thief has met a girl on the corner, and he gives her something. We rush to catch up with them, pulling out cameras that had been retired for the evening. The boy and girl turn down an alley. Bob and I trot to get close, then stay ten or so feet behind them as we strategize. I want to confront them right away since I know they just took something. We close in and I come around the girl’s side.
“Give me the wallet,” I say, my hand out. I know she still has it. I know she has no choice. We’re in a plaça now, with lots of people around. I repeat my demand a couple of times.
The girl looks at me like I’m crazy, her fingers to her chest, shoulders hunched. “No have,” she says, or something like that. I put my hand on her. She immediately twirls out of my grasp so I turn to the boy.
“Give it to me,” I say. “I saw you take the wallet.” I hold up my camera. “I have photos,” I lied. “He has video.” I point to Bob, who is filming.
I reach for the boy, and they both take off, full-speed. “Cartaristas!” Bob shouts, mostly as an experiment. His Swedish-accented Spanish reverberates throughout the land. Every head in the plaça turns to look at us. No one seems to look at the fleeing thieves. We let them go.
Backtracking, we return to the bar. The victim is clearly looking for something. He’s only just discovered his loss.
“Is your wallet gone?” I ask him in a breathless rush. “I saw the thief who took it! I’ve just been chasing him!”
“No, my mobile is gone,” he said. “It was right here.”
Shit! If I had demanded they give me the phone I would probably have gotten it back!
The pigeon poop perp squirts fake bird droppings on his mark, then points it out and offers to clean it off—while he cleans the victim out.
Barcelona, Spain—The Pigeon Poop Pickpocket got me with a double-blob on my back. I felt it ever-so-lightly and knew instantly we’d been accosted by that infamous and elusive thief. A second later, the thief overtook us, smiled, pointed to my back, and said “bird, bird.”
The Pigeon Poop Pickpocket
What luck! Bob and I were ecstatic to see that we recognized the creep. We had met the pigeon poop pickpocket exactly ten years ago, when he squirted my back with fake pigeon poop about ten blocks from this location. His technique was identical, he looked the same and dressed the same, in shorts, with a cap, backpack, and big glasses.
The pigeon poop perpetrator.
Our excitement impaired our judgment. We should have let the game play out. After all, we were ready for him, with a prop wallet in Bob’s pocket, three hidden video cameras, and two still cameras. Our cash and credit cards were safely stowed in pouches under our clothing. But we remembered how slippery this guy was in June of 1998, that we couldn’t induce him into conversation, that he smiled politely and slowly backed up until he could escape from us.
This time, Bob kept a hand on him in a friendly sort of way and insisted that he talk to us. He didn’t seem to remember us at all. Bob suggested coffee and the thief agreed, leading us to a café a block away. Bob stayed in his face and I had him trapped from behind as we fast-walked and fast-talked. Would he bolt at the intersection? We both noticed that he emptied his goop as we walked. It flew out in big globs as he slyly ditched the evidence. Until he dumped his little squirt-bag, he gestured like a magician: theatrically, as if we wouldn’t notice his tightly clenched fist.
What’s in his right fist?
Moments later we were sitting around a little aluminum table outside a restaurant. We ordered cafe solo, he ordered a “bitter.” The waiter gave him a sideways glance. Was he recognized? The waiter said no, when we returned later to ask. The thief told us his name was Manel, but he was in a hurry, he had to go pick up his children. I respected his desire to be on time for his kids, but Bob wanted to talk now. I’m such a sucker. I believed this known criminal, this con artist with the duplicitous smile. Eventually we agreed to meet in our hotel lobby in an hour and a half. “2:30,” he stressed, “not 3:00.” I’m such a sucker. With his big smile, he backed away until he could lope out of site, pointing to his watch and the general direction of our hotel. Just like ten years ago.
We rushed back to the hotel. If nothing else, we needed to put away our tapes for safekeeping. And I needed to change out of my shitty clothes. He won’t show up, Bob said. But we called our trusty translator Terry, our dear friend Terry, who dropped everything to fly all the way across town on his bike. This is a big deal. Terry’s starting up FluidInfo, the tech company of tomorrow according to the elite circle who understand what he’s doing and fund him. He doesn’t really have time to fool with thieves. But he made time, just in case. He won’t show up, Terry said.
Of course the perp didn’t show up.
Ten years earlier… The pigeon poop pickpocket in 1998. He just happened to have a packet of tissues handy; just happened to have a bottle of water.
With Terry, we went to the police station to show his photo, again. We did it years ago and he’s still at large, but we wanted to hear what the cops said. Ten years ago the police showed us the three hundred faces in their database, all men who practice la mancha, the stain, or what we call the pigeon poop pickpocket’s ploy. Our man’s mug was not on file then. This visit was unproductive, even a comedy of errors. Predictable, I thought.
The next day we found Kharem approaching marks on La Rambla, and we showed him photos of Manel. No, Kharem said, his name is Miemou. He owns a bar. Bar owners can steal with impunity, Kharem told us, because no one will accuse them. Miemou has a brother also named Kharem, who picks pockets in the Metro. That was Kharem’s story, anyway, which I take with a grain of salt. (I’m not always a sucker.)
The pigeon poop pickpocket’s ploy is this: The perp sneakily throws or squirts something onto your back. Then he politely points out the mess and offers to help you clean it off—while he cleans you out. This is a perfect con. (Con comes from confidence, right?) He plays the good Samaritan. He gains your confidence. He creates a strategy to touch your body wherever he wants to, wherever the disgusting mess supposedly is. A pickpocket can’t steal without touching, right? Why wait for an opportunity? That’s for amateurs. Create one! I call these thieves strategists and they are devious. Look, he makes you grateful to him. He desensitizes you to his touch. And he employs the yuck factor, taking advantage of the truth that bird shit directly triggers the ick region of the brain, a highly effective distraction.
This guy got it good.
FAQ:
How is the goop applied to the mark?
I begged the pickpocket to show us his tool, both this time and ten years ago. No luck. It seems to be a small plastic bag. I watched his hand like a hawk and never caught a glimpse of the thing. Neither did I find it when I returned to the scene later and searched the pavement. Other practitioners surely have their own inventions. In Las Vegas, we saw a team use the same technique, but one of their members spit into the victim’s hair. And here’s a photo of a victim who was doused with brown goo. Must have used a water pistol.
What is the stuff made of?
I felt that our perp’s formula has changed from ten years ago. Then, it was more a striated mix of blackish and white stuff. This time, it was pure beige. It dried to a soft, waxy cake with a texture similar to cheap chocolate, or white chocolate. I was not a dedicated enough researcher to finger the stuff, smell it, or taste it. It definitely stimulated the ick region of my brain.
Does it wash out?
Mine did. Another perp’s formula might not.
Is this strategy unique to Barcelona?
Not at all. In fact, most of the 300 perpetrators the police had on file were South Americans. The spitters in Las Vegas mentioned above were from South America, too. In New York, the method is identical but the perps squirt ketchup or mustard on the mark near a street-food vendor; hence, the “condiment caper.”
Any other clever twists on the theme?
Some perps dirty their male marks’ jacket. The clean-up process involves removing the jacket, the better to clean it, which gives free and easy access to all pockets, including the difficult-to-reach inside breast pocket.
Barcelona, Spain—We found Kharem again on La Rambla. He passed us head-on, with a huge smile. He didn’t notice us, but I recognized him. We swiveled on our heels and followed.
He skipped along the outdoor restaurants, waving to an individual in almost every group, as if he knew them. He walked fast but paused frequently to touch someone, say a word, greet a stranger like a friend. He kept moving. Walked almost to the bottom of Ramblas, where he stopped for a full minute to chat with a driver at the wheel of a delivery truck. Then he continued in the same style back up La Rambla.
At one point I asked a woman he had spoken to, what did he say? Oh, just something about a restaurant, she said. She wasn’t sure what it was about. Then Kharem made a right, into the side street where we’ve had coffee with him many times. Bob wanted to go say hello. I wanted to lie low and continue filming him. Bob moved toward Kharem and I followed. The thief lit up and gave us hugs. (mi amigos!), touching his chest, grinning.
Kharem pauses to smile at diners on La Rambla. A big grin implies he’s “okay!”
But Kharem is in a bad mood because the day before yesterday, he was out—not stealing!—when the police stopped him. They said they wanted to take him to the police station, but instead, they drove him up to Montjuïc. There on the mountain, they beat him up. He points out the scabs around his mouth. They took over €500 from him. Then they left him on the mountain. It took him three hours to walk down. He’s angry.
Pickpocket technique
Kharem wants to talk in relative privacy, so he leads us through a labyrinth of narrow alleys to a bar he knows, where we won’t pay tourist prices. I was nervous when he led us through similar iffy streets in 2001, when we first met him. Less worried in the following years. Now, after meeting Kharem two or three times almost every summer, I feel comfortable enough to follow him. As he feels comfortable enough to talk to us, and to allow us to film him.
He leads us into a tiny bar and we order two beers. The woman bartender gives us three and we feel stuck with three. We don’t want to make a scene. After fighting Kharem for the right to pay, we fork over €9 for them—$15—which feels a bit touristic to me.
Kharem wants to be noticed.
Kharem immediately gets into an Arabic shouting match with another patron, then simultaneously a loud Spanish argument with the bartender. Bob and I are in the literal middle.
Kharem even touches a woman on the street. Would a thief act like this? Joking and touching a stranger on the street?
The Arab starts to leave and Kharem offers him our extra beer, but he rejects it. Then we get kicked out and are not allowed to even take the beers.
In the bar, Kharem takes a sip between angry shouts. Video taping from below.
We walk to Plaça de George Orwell, and Kharem seems pleased to remind us that we took a photo here long ago. We catch up on the year’s news as best we can. Kharem’s English is better than our Spanish, but we do best in French. Still, we’re missing too much. We phone Terry, who drops everything and zips over on his bike.
Meanwhile, Kharem and Bob demonstrate wallet steals on each other. First Bob takes Kharem’s wallet. Then Kharem shows his style, which is the same one he demonstrated in 2001, pulling on the bottom of the pant leg. Kharem shows us his wallet. “American,” he says. Meaning: he got it from an American.
Kharem points to a couple sitting at a table in the square. “See her camera?” he asks. “I’ll go steal it. You can film me.”
Bob and Kharem demonstrate their techniques. “But what you do on stage is very different,” Kharem tells Bob.
“No, Kharem, you know we can’t do that.” I remember he had told us years ago I want to be in your movies.
Now that Terry has arrived, we can ask pointed questions, like, why all the happy greetings on Las Ramblas? What were you doing?
“I make them feel comfortable around me, I make them relax,” Kharem says. He takes out a handful of restaurant brochures from his back pocket and explains that he distributes them, and walks away. Then he comes back to collect them. “I’m like a vacuum cleaner,” he grins.
Kharem demonstrates his postcard technique. “Pretend the wallet is on a cafe table…”
Ah, I realize that Kharem has fine-tuned his old technique, the “postcard steal” that he demonstrated back in 2002. In it, he fans out some postcards and pretends to offer them to people at tables who have a valuable item sitting on the table. He holds the postcards close over the item, and when he walks away, the item goes with him under the postcards.
In his 2002 demo, we were in an alley without a table, so we had to pretend. You get the idea, though.
As if offering them for sale, Kharem fans out his postcards over the wallet…
This happy, in-your-face style Kharem has developed busts yet another myth of pickpocketdom. That a pickpocket wants as little face-time as possible. If Bob and I hadn’t already known and recognized this thief, we would never have tagged onto him. Sure, we’d catch his behavior in step two of his modus operandi; but we wouldn’t suspect him as he walked about greeting people. It’s brilliant.
Kharem’s new M.O. raises him from a simple thief to a con man. He now preps his marks with a premeditated encounter designed to establish acceptance of his presence.
“If you’re like a vacuum cleaner, how come you have no money?” Bob asks.
“I told you, the police took €500 and something from me day before yesterday, that I was going to use to pay the rent, but now—”
Under the cover of the postcards, Kharem snags the wallet.
Terry says it’s possible that the police, knowing that these guys have to pay rent at the end of the month, pick them up late in the month. There are people who prey on cleaning women who don’t have papers, and they rob them at the end of the month, when it’s likely they’ll be carrying cash. He knows a woman it happened to.
“The police are caca, caca, caca” Kharem says, his finger in front of my lens again. “If I had a gun I would shoot them. When I have extra money, I give it to people who don’t have money, people who are hungry. But now I’m looking for a gun to kill the police.”
“You don’t have the heart,” I say.
“No, I don’t have the heart. But I want to.”
Kharem is angry about being mistreated by the police. He gets a kick out of putting his finger in front of my lens, over and over.
“Tell me about the man in the video,” Bob says. Earlier, he had shown Kharem a video of the “pigeon poop perp,” and Kharem had a lot to say—more than we could understand without Terry’s translation. Now he explained again. He knows the man, claims his name is Miemou, that he owns a bar and is also a pickpocket. This sounds unlikely to me, but Kharem explains his theory of corruption.
Bambi talks to Kharem and Terry Jones.
“Now I’m going to do you a favor. Watch me,” Kharem says. “I’m going to go among the tables in the plaza, among the people dining there. But for you, I will not steal anything. Watch.”
Kharem goes from table to table distributing the brochures he’s been carrying and returns to us. Empty handed. “I need to go back to work. I have no money and I have to pay the rent today.”
Three female thieves with cardboard shields; two thefts from a park; one pigeon poop pickpocket; one postcard technique theft; one very prolific, multi-talented pickpocket; continuous 3-shell, or pea games; and more. No partridge or pear tree.
Bob and I just took three days to re-evaluate the street crime scene in Barcelona. I don’t know why it’s such a contentious topic. Visit any travel forum and you’ll find defenders who say street crime isn’t bad there, that it’s no worse than in any big city, that it’s the stupid tourists’ fault.
Bob and I love Barcelona and believe me, it pains us to say it; but yes, Barcelona is right up there among the cities with the highest rates of theft from tourists. Still. Then and now.
We did not spend every minute of our three days there seeking out thieves. We began by visiting a park with our friend and his children. We did not see the thefts that occurred there just then, but the perpetrator was apprehended, the police were still on site, and Bob spoke with the three victims, two of whom were a young French tourist couple. Their valuables and documents were stolen as they lay dozing, or semi-dozing. The gentleman was alerted when the thief tried to get into his bag, which he was using as a pillow. Must have been a thrill-seeking thief to attempt stealing items from right under a man’s head.
We did not loiter in dark alleys or hang around after hours. We tramped the beaten path. The pigeon poop perp targeted us in the middle of lunch hour on a broad business and shopping street, across from a big hotel. Kharem, whom we’ve found almost every year since 2001, was hard at work with a brand new style on Las Ramblas, Barcelona’s main tourist artery. Same with all the other thieves we came across in these days. If you do stray from the well-worn paths, you’ll find more and different crime, for sure.
We were strolling to our friends’ apartment for dinner, technically off duty with cameras put away, when we saw a young man steal from a restaurant table. We were not looking for crime.
The receptionist in our hotel (which has 90 rooms), said she gets reports of theft from the hotel’s guests about once a week in the summer, but much less during the rest of the year because then guests are mostly Spanish business people who behave differently. The next evening, the receptionist told us that her cell phone had just been stolen from her handbag as she sat in a coffee shop with friends.
A receptionist at another hotel, which was located closer to Las Ramblas, said he gets one or two reports a day from his guests. I don’t know how many rooms that hotel has.
An Australian doctor told us he had just spent six days in Barcelona at a pathology conference. One of his colleagues had her passport stolen and when she went to the embassy, fourteen other conference attendees were there reporting thefts.
Over the next week or so, I’ll be posting details of the above incidents and characters, and more from this research trip. I may not remember to mention what a good time we had in Barcelona, the good meals we had, the beautiful architecture we feasted our eyes on, or the lively ambiance we enjoyed. These are only a few of the delights the city has for tourists to discover. In some way, I’m sorry that my writing focuses on crime. I don’t want to hurt the reputations of cities I love. Neither do I want to scare anyone away from visiting just because there is a relatively high rate of theft.
City of Hugs and Thugs. Naples, Italy— At the next stop, two more suspects pushed on beside me. The bus remained crowded all the way to the park before the tunnel, then loosened up a bit. All the thieves stayed aboard, determined, as a group, to get Bob’s wallet. The gray-haired man tried forever, then finally turned the job over to a colleague while he blocked and pinned Bob in a ridiculously obvious way. The tram was no longer crowded; there was no excuse for him to be so close!
None of them got it, though they tried hard. We all got off at Piazza Vittoria, the end of the line. Bob touched the gray-haired man’s shoulder and asked him to talk to us for a minute.
He tried to get away but Bob was insistent and started touching him all over and jabbering at him. A criminal crowd gathered, curious thieves, intrigued and protective of their members. I circled around them all with two cameras rolling as Bob stole the gray-hair’s cell phone, then his tie. It was perfect. He had no idea what was happening, no idea anything was gone. It was hilarious to see his confusion in the role of victim. Funny to Bob and me, and funnier still to the criminal crew.
The other pickpockets burst into laughter. After a moment’s delay, so did gray-hair. Then Bob stole his glasses and another guy’s watch. Great reactions.
That, as usual, broke the ice and established instant rapport. There were introductions all around, and a suggestion for coffee at a bar across the square. Tony, a happy, funny guy who had only two large rabbit teeth, was the most outgoing. It took us, and him, several minutes to realize we’d met before. We had coffee with him and his partner, Mario, in 2001. Tony now made a laughing phone call to Mario to tell him he was with us again.
Salvatore, the youngest, asked a lot of questions about us and what we do, and was eager to meet again. [We did meet again.] He gave us his cell phone number, and wanted to know when we’d be back. Like the others, he had missing and mostly rotten teeth. All of them seemed to love when we dropped the names of other local thieves we know. It must sort of prove that we’re okay. We talked shop as best we could with limited language. They all had a great time with us, it was obvious.
Tony showed us pictures of his wife and children. He showed us how his own wallet was wedged tightly sideways in his back pocket so it couldn’t be removed. Then he demonstrated the local specialty: removing money from a wallet without removing the wallet from the pocket. Very slick. Gray-haired Nuncio then showed how he uses his bag of newspaper to shield an inside-jacket-pocket steal (considered the most difficult).
The question remains: why did this gang of veteran thieves fail to get Bob’s wallet? Unfortunately, we couldn’t ask such a sophisticated question without an interpreter. But we’ll return, and we know where to find them. After eleven years of observing street thieves in Naples, we’ll do better interviewing now, than filming on trams.
