Mumbai, India: Chowpatty Beach, along which runs Marine Drive.A mumbai pickpocket at work and arrested.
Our law enforcement friends in Mumbai do some creative police work. Methods that would never be tolerated in the U.S.
Okay, so they knew that a gang of pickpockets was targeting people on Marine Drive, the famous beach road. At 3 a.m. a week ago Thursday, a uniformed cop stood watching with a birds-eye view from a pedestrian overpass. Constable Bhaidas Chavana, the police officer, had his eye on a 16-year-old boy sitting beside a sleeping man.
Up on the overpass, Constable Chavan stopped a passerby who happened to be a photographer on a night assignment. Then he stopped a juvenile, also walking along. He enlisted the two civilians to run down to the beach road and nab the criminal! He ordered them to do it! One of them a child, the other presumably carrying expensive photography equipment! Can you imagine?
This must not be odd in Mumbai because the two citizens obeyed, trotting down to the beach as they were directed to, and grabbing the pickpocket. In the commotion, the victim woke up and confirmed that 500 rupees were gone. The pickpocket was searched—by the enlisted civilians—but they found no cash on him.
The Mumbai pickpocket
By then the constable arrived and his expertise proved itself. He turned up the thief’s shirt collar, felt for an opened seam, and from it withdrew the victim’s 500 rupees. Then he found a razor blade hidden in a slit seam of the pickpocket’s shirt cuff.
The pickpocket admitted that he’d dipped into the pockets of 16 other people in the area that night. Where then, was the rest of his loot? He also admitted to being a drug user. Perhaps he purchased drugs with the cash he stole earlier—weed was found in his pants pocket. Or he may have paid off a boss or a debt, or simply stashed his loot for safekeeping.
Hard to tell fact from fiction when researching “the world’s scariest drug” called Devil’s Breath, burundanga, and scopolamine. The second- and third-hand reports, of which there are many, seem to be well-intentioned warnings and FUD (fear, uncertainty, doubt).
The dosing methods and effects on the victims are duly terrifying. But what good is a warning if there is no possible way of protecting against the event? How can one prevent a stranger from blowing a bit of powder in one’s face? Or tainting a card or paper with the dust and showing it to the mark? “Excuse me, do you know this address/store/location?” —and you’re done for.
One thing is certain though. This 35-minute documentary about Devil’s Breath is fantastic, whether true or dramatized. The characters in it are all credible. The victims are believable and the perpetrators are colorful and convincing. Why would perps reveal the awful details of their criminal trade? Well, that doesn’t surprise me, given my experience making documentaries about thieves.
You probably know scopolamine as a drug for motion sickness. Perhaps you’ve worn the patch on a boat or ship. Although reports of criminal use of scopolamine are not new, and the video’s been around for a while, I’ve posted it here because I think the documentary is so good.
My friend Carolyn Hamilton, who lives in Ecuador, just mentioned that warnings of Devil’s Breath are swirling. Reports or rumors, I’m not sure. Carolyn photographed the brugmansia tree soon after moving to Ecuador, simply because of its beauty. Later, in a native plants class, she learned that “people plant it outside their bedroom windows so they will sleep better at night! Among the indigenous peoples it’s considered good luck to have one planted at your doorstep. And it’s known to be poisonous.” The photo above is from Carolyn’s neighbor’s yard.
Have any of you been drugged with Devil’s Breath? Have any of you heard a first-hand report from someone else who was drugged?
Edit 12/13/15: The New York Times just published an article, The Swindled Samaritan, which tells a first-person account of burundanga-drugging. The victim’s apartment was totally emptied by the drugger-thieves and the victim had no memory of the event. Her apartment lobby video showed her bringing the thieves in, and the doorman described how those thieves carried out her possessions.
A young pickpocket tries to take the wallet of a man being frisked by a police officer in downtown Rio. According to Globo, the man was accused of having stolen from a woman, which he denied when the police officer arrived. The boy attempted to steal the man’s wallet three times. The minor was arrested.
The photo is too good. So good it looks set up, or posed. But I’ve seen the desperation of some pickpockets. I’ve seen outlandish, brazen attempts. So for now, I choose to think the photographer got a lucky shot of a real theft, or theft attempt.
This is from G1 Fotos on globo.com from September 4, 2013. It’s the fourth image in the slideshow.
Pickpocket Kharem gets the victim to look back at his right shoulder. Meanwhile, his left hand opens the victim’s left front jacket, exposing the breast pocket.
How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets usually involves the application of something disgusting, much like the pigeon poop pickpocket does. Occasionally, they use a baby—not to apply the gunk, but to stick its little hand into the male victim’s breast pocket.
Kharem shows how the pickpocket’s partner then comes from the front, dipping into the breast pocket while the vic looks in the opposite direction.Bambi plays the distractor while Kharem does the dipping.
A man’s inside breast pocket is one of the safest from pickpockets. It’s one of the hardest pockets to steal from because it’s in front, up close, in a sensitive area. Unless, of course, the jacket is hanging on the back of a chair—then it’s a piece of cake.
Clever strategist pickpockets tap directly into their victims’ emotions, the hard-wired ick factor being a useful one. Bob Arno described how, as a youth, he was “stunned at the callousness of using the primeval emotion, fear, to accomplish distraction”:
“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.”
This daring face-to-face technique used to steal from inside jacket pockets, no matter how brief and fleeting, is not for every thief. It takes a certain coolness to step up to your potential victim, show him a close-up of your face, and slide your hands all over his body, like a tailor. The pickpocket keeps track of multiple streams: he’s eliciting the ick factor, acting the good Samaritan, and setting up a stealthy steal literally right under the vic’s nose. He’s probably watching out for police and witnesses at the same time. He’s probably sweating.
It doesn’t always work:
Indian Shit Trick
“We were about to cross the street in Delhi,” a British traveler told me. “It was very crowded, people pushing and going in every direction. We stepped off the curb between some parked cars which were very close together. I was just concentrating on getting through them and across the street. A man bumped into my husband as we were squeezing between the cars. He followed as we crossed the street, and as we reached the other side, he pointed to my husband’s shoe. ‘Shit,’ he said. We looked down and saw it. It was shit on my husband’s shoe. The man offered to help us clean it off, but we thought we knew what he was up to. We thought it was a scam. We’d heard that they do that, then demand huge sums of money in payment, and they don’t let you go until you pay. So we said no, and walked away with shit on the shoe.”
How pickpockets steal from inside jacket pockets
Of course [the prolific and multi-talented Barcelona pickpocket] Kharem has a version of this one. He had led us into a seedy alley, long, dim, and deserted, eager to demo, at Bob’s request, his expertise on inside jacket pockets.
“I don’t want to go much further in this direction,” I said, chicken as usual.
“Don’t worry,” our interpreter soothed me. “I know where we are.” That was Terry Jones, our Barcelona-based friend and bag-snatch authority.
Kharem stopped at a graffitied niche where a stone water fountain was the sole feature.
The only jacket among the four of us on this warm spring afternoon was Kharem’s prop, the “tool” he used over his arm. He put the jacket on Terry and took a fat brown wallet from his own pocket.
“Whose is that?” I asked him.
“Mine!” he laughed, and put it in Terry’s inside breast pocket. I should have asked whose was it.
“Wait till these people pass.” A couple ambled toward us, oblivious to all but themselves.
“Shall I do it on those tourists?” Kharem asked.
“Noooo, we’ll wait,” Bob said, and the rest of us laughed nervously.
“It takes two people,” Kharem explained. “One spits into his hand, then applies the spit onto the victim’s right shoulder.” Standing behind Terry, he showed how to “help” the victim by pointing out the mess. After indicating the shoulder to Terry, who couldn’t see that far behind him, Kharem grasped the upper right sleeve with his right hand and Terry’s left lapel with his left. With both hands, he twisted the jacket slightly around to the right.
This accomplished two necessities. It successfully turned Terry’s attention far to his right, and it intentionally made vulnerable Terry’s left inside breast pocket. With perfect timing, the “pick” of the pair, approaching from the front, would then have free access to the wallet.
It’s hard not to like Kharem in conversation, but we remind ourselves: he’s a thief.
Kharem suggested I be the spitting Samaritan and, as Bob filmed and Terry cooperated, we easily stole the wallet. Kharem high-fived his new partner.
“Eeew,” I said, pulling my hand away. His was wet.
“It’s not spit!” he said. “It’s from the water fountain!” I hadn’t noticed that he’d gotten a quick drink.
Spit, shit, what’s the difference? The object is to apply a substance that the victim wants off now. Something disgusting, something staining, something smelly. In New York they use mustard. In London ice cream. Mix and match. The strategist has created his opportunity complete with an excuse to get up close and personal…to touch…to take.
Backseat scooter thieves snatch from tuk-tuk passengers.
Bangkok theft has gotten bad enough that police have posted warnings about theft from tuk-tuk passengers. The convenient little auto-rickshaws, ubiquitous on the streets of Bangkok, are completely open and often stuck in traffic. Scooters can maneuver the interstices of clogged roads, sneak up on tuk-tuk passenger, then slither away between vehicles to beat an escape.
It’s a technique long in play in Italy, especially in Naples. There, targets of scippatori, the Italian version of scooter-riding bandits, are more often pedestrians. (Though the thieves have a nasty technique for stealing watches from expensive cars stuck in traffic, even with their windows closed.)
When riding in the three-wheeled open taxis, be sure to keep your bags secured, out-of-sight, or away from the perimeters.
Bangkok theft extends beyond pickpocketing and bag snatching to scams that cost the tourist serious money. Particularly prevalent are gem scams, in which the visitor is brought to a “special sale” and encouraged to buy gems for resale at huge profits in their home countries. And bar scams, and vehicle-rental scams, drink-drugging, and pseudo-cops.
As if all these Bangkok theft issues weren’t enough for a tourist to worry about, there’s more. Road safety is one of the worst in the world, with poor vehicle and driver safety standards, little if any enforcement, few ambulances, and roads too clogged for ambulances to get through anyway. Add to that wild motorcycle riders attempting to speed around traffic by veering suddenly onto sidewalks, and even pedestrians must be seriously watchful.
I strongly recommend that travelers planning to visit Thailand read the U.S. State Department’s Country Specific Information on Thailand. Like all U.S. State Department country profiles, it covers very real ongoing crime and safety issues without exaggeration.
It’s not that we’re any less savvy. It’s the darn handbag. It’s simply easier for a pickpocket to slip his fingers into a bag than into a pocket. Or worse, to grab the whole bag. Our research proves it: pickpockets prefer women!
Anti-Theft Tips for Women
Don’t send signals that you’re worth the thief’s effort. Forget the flashy jewelry when you’re out and about. Knock-off watches and costume jewelry are no better; the thief can’t tell they’re fake.
Public restrooms: Rude, but true: you may or may not notice a hand reach over the door and snag your bag off the hook at the most inopportune moment. Loop it around the hook and keep your eye on it. Dropped coins in the stall beside could be a distraction ruse.
If you carry a purse, try to give it nerve endings: hold it snug against your body, never let it stick out behind you, especially never let it stick out behind you open.
Use a wide-strapped bag and wear the strap diagonally across your chest, or a short-strapped one with the purse tucked under your arm.
Keep your bag closed properly. If it has a flap, wear the flap against your body.
Keep your wallet at the bottom of your purse.
Never hang your purse on the back of a chair in a public place, where it’s out of your sight. Keep it on your lap. If you must put it on the floor, tuck the strap under your thigh, or put the chair leg through it.
Be sure your purse is in front of you as you enter revolving doors, board trains, etc.
Never leave your purse in a shopping cart or baby stroller.
Never set your purse down in a shop so you can turn your attention elsewhere.
To prevent a drive-by bag snatch, walk far from the curb, on the side of the street towards traffic.
If your bag is snatched, let it go. It may be impossible to fight the instinct to hold on, but try to ingrain that thought. You can get seriously hurt in a bag snatch.
Secure your fanny pack zippers with paperclips, or anything to slow a thief.
Fanny packs may not be the height of fashion, but they are very safe if you secure the zippers, which are easily opened by practiced thieves. Use a safety pin, a paperclip fastened to a rubberband around the belt strap, or string. Anything to make opening the zipper more difficult.Hotel lobbies are not secure enough to leave bags unguarded.
Business travelers:
Don’t leave your purse, laptop, or briefcase unguarded at hotel breakfast buffets. “Breakfast thieves” specialize in stealing these at upscale hotels.
Always make sure your hotel room door closes completely when you leave.
Do not carry your electronic card key in its folder marked with your room number.
In nightclubs, do not leave your drink unattended. Drink-drugging is a growing problem.
Just about now, millions of people are thinking about summer travel. For many, it will be foreign travel. Novice or expert, it doesn’t hurt to review a few travel safety tips. Thefts everywhere are on the increase. And you want a theft-proof vacation, right?
Make these theft-thwarter tips a practice whether you’re far away or not so far, and you’re much less likely to become a sad statistic.
Bags
•Count them often and watch that everything is loaded into your taxi. Sometimes they’re not.
•Keep an eye on them in the hotel lobby; anyone can walk in and grab them when you’re not paying attention. It happens.
•Assess the risks of hotel lobby luggage storage before taking advantage of the service. Is it a locked room? Are they just in a heap in the lobby? Is there free access to them?
•Be aware that carry-on allowance may be severely limited on flights originating outside of America. Roll-ons allowed within the U.S. may be required to fly cargo on foreign flights. Choose a lockable carry-on, or keep a canvas tote handy to shift your valuables and necessities into if your bag is taken away for cargo.
Smartphones
The young pickpocket tries to nab the phone one-handed under his paper. (Frame grab from video.)
•Do not leave valuables sitting exposed on a café table. Thieves can swipe smartphones as swiftly as a magician.
•Don’t flaunt it, or your iPad. These are highly valuable swipeables, and “Apple-picking,” when these electronics are snatched from users’ hands, is becoming more frequent and more dangerous.
ATMs
•Cover your fingers as you enter your PIN.
•Do not become distracted by activity around you. Fake fights are sometimes staged, or you might be asked for assistance.
Hotel Rooms
•Do not carry your electronic card key in its folder marked with your room number.
•Check outside window access before leaving your window open when you’re gone or asleep. Do a hotel room security check.
•Always make sure your door closes completely when you leave your room.
•Remind yourself to empty the safe with a note in your shoe.
Public Transportation
•The moments of entering and exiting crowded public transportation are your most vulnerable and a thief’s most rewarding.
•If you’re in a crowd, be particularly aware of your valuables. Suspect bumps or jostles: they may be a distraction technique.
•Do not leave your bag unattended on a train. Do not leave it on luggage racks at the end of the carriage. Be aware of it if you place it on an overhead rack.
•If you’re pickpocketed in a crowd, try demanding the return of your item. It might mysteriously hit the floor. Shout out, too, on the off chance an undercover police officer is nearby.
A Lisbon pickpocket demonstrates how he steals a wallet.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.
Pockets
•No, they’re not safe for valuables.
•Yes, buttons, zippers, and velcro give a fraction of a drop of extra protection in that they take the pickpocket an extra second.
•Use under-clothes pouches to store your stuff safely. Or try Stashitware, underpants with a safe pocket.
•Remove valuables from the pockets of a jacket before hanging it on the back of a chair.
Old Tricks
•Escalators: Recognize the Pile-Up-Pick. The person in front of you drops something just as the escalator ends, bends to pick it up and causes a pile-up. As people compress in the crash, the person behind you picks your pocket.
•Helpful cleaners: Heads up if you hear “something dirty got on you—let me help you clean it off.” He’ll clean you out.
•Electronic equipment surreptitiously offered on street corners is tempting, but you’ll walk away with a block of wood, and wonder how it happened. Heads up on the bait-and-switch scam.
•You cannot win pavement wagers. The three-shell game, three-card monte and others are designed to extract your money. The operator is in complete control and fellow players are shills.
•If you buy art or furniture to have shipped home by the store, take a picture of it just to be sure you get the right items. The very act of photographing seems to increase your odds.
Four pickpockets at work on a crowded tram.
Bottom Line
•Don’t attract thieves by looking like a wealthy tourist. Don’t wear flashy jewelry. Or replicas—the thief can’t tell your Rolex is fake or your jewelry is costume. Leave it in your hotel.
•You can never obtain 100% total security, but aim for a compromise that is comfortable for your travel style.
•Remember: the idea is to increase your awareness and decrease the opportunities for an unfortunate incident.
Have a great summer and a theft-proof vacation! And happy travels!
In a dim, smoky opium den, we faced the backlit profile of the Moroccan pickpocket. He barely looked at us, concentrating instead on our interpreter. Steaming glasses of sweet mint tea sat before us, packed with fresh leaves of brilliant green. Bob waited to sip his tea until I was half finished with mine—to see if I keeled over, I imagined.
We had come to the medina in Tangier in search of a pickpocket, and our hired guide had found him. Al’alla was hunched over a newspaper at the front table in the cave-like café, the only spot within bright enough for reading. After ushering us into chairs and ordering our tea, our guide and translator, Ma’halla, spoke in rapid Arabic to Al’alla: “Don’t say a word of English, my friend. Let me do all the talking. Just answer my questions in Arabic and we’ll both have money for the smoke tonight.” Well, he could have said that; but it soon became clear that Al’alla had been a skilled pickpocket in his day.
Questions tumbled eagerly from Bob, but Al’alla was no easy subject. Perhaps embarrassed by his miscreant days, he skittered and skirted the core of his story. Bob prodded, encouraged, and teased until he finally found the appropriate tool for extraction. With the glibness of a talk-show host and the sincerity of a confidence man, he proffered the camaraderie and respect of a colleague. Bob’s disingenuous smile and elegant canards came effortlessly, as if from a spurious rogue. Al’alla relaxed and, perhaps followed suit.
Pickpockets in Morocco
Al’alla had honed his talent as a child in Tangier, then traveled to Barcelona for the big time. It was the sixties, and while Tangier reveled in flower power and hippie freedom, its drugs were routed to Europe through Spain. Al’alla found picking pockets far more lucrative and infinitely safer than drug trafficking. People carried cash then, not plastic, and naiveté in travelers was more prevalent than sophistication.
On La Rambla, Barcelona’s broad and proud promenade, people strolled like clots through an artery. Kiosks of birds, flowers, and newspapers crowded the avenue. Parrots squawked, pigeons cooed, fragrances of cut lilies and hot paella wafted on the air—it’s still like that today. No one suspected the darting figure of a well-dressed gentleman, so obviously in a hurry, as he ricocheted off the moving mob.
Al’alla in his 50s still had a handsome face, though its several scars suggested a rough past. He was small and wiry with delicate hands. His soft-spoken manner and gentle composure alluded to the pretender’s persona he got away with in his furtive past. Today he worked as an electrician, and his handful of tools lay on the table as we spoke.
I’d been more than a little worried when Ma’halla first led us through the bewildering high-walled alleys of the old city. It wasn’t long before I realized we’d never find our way out alone. Was the medina really this big, or was Ma’halla confusing us with tricky detours? We lost all sense of direction.
The busy souk, with its colorful stalls of spices, brass pots, and rugs, gave way to vegetable sellers who sat on the ground shelling peas, defeathering hens, stripping mint leaves. Then there were only blind alleys, closed doors, and the occasional Arab hurrying past in his long, sweeping djellabah.
Ma’halla was not particularly savory: his face, too, was scarred, and the few teeth he possessed were red with rot. Big and muscular, he wore a cap pulled low over his bloodshot eyes. His English was good though, and he exuded a wary confidence that suited his mission.
The unnamed café was a hang-out for small-time crooks and drug addicts. A few strung-out characters packed their pipes behind us asContinue reading
