Venice pickpockets are identified on a poster taped up all over Venice. Take a good look and you’ll realize it’s pretty hopeless to identify and avoid them by face alone. They look like any women. Italian? Maybe. Foreign tourist? Sure.

The crowds are thick and move slowly through the narrow Venetian alleys. Families with strollers are road blocks, and day-trippers laden with shopping bags bump along causing bottlenecks with their wide loads. Oglers, window-shoppers, umbrella-hoisting tour leaders of the timid, hoards of school children, and counterfeit bag sellers all slow the flow of traffic to less than a crawl.

Good news for the pickpocket! For a pickpocket, the only situation better than a tight crowd is a tight crowd that can’t move.

Venice pickpockets

And yet, somehow, the wily, invisible thief insinuates herself in amongst the happy, distracted people, the hot and bothered people, and slips away like that elusive kernel in the popcorn bowl.

Pickpocketing is not a natural phenomenon in this island labyrinth. Without the crowds, it’s a city unsuitable for escape, and too expensive in which to live.

Venice pickpockets vigilantes

Venice has a vigilante-sort of group, developed in 1996, called “Cittadini non Distratti,” (Undistracted Citizens). Made up of retired businessmen, it had about 400 members some years ago when Bob and I met its founder. They are the eyes and ears against pickpockets, since the paid police do not do anything. Shop merchants and locals call one of ten “operatives” when they see pickpockets or suspicious characters. Operatives zoom over quickly and investigate, then call the police pickpocket squad (which used to be a force of six. Without checking, I’m willing to bet there are no dedicated officers left at all). Renato Serena, back then head of the group, had handcuffs, a sort-of badge he flashed, and the quasi-authority to arrest. Locals prefer to call the vigilante group over the police because of all the governmental red tape, reports, redundancy, going down to station.

The Municipale Police are only interested in Venice, Signore Serena told us, not in Italy or Europe. The squad can’t really arrest or jail; they “just open the door to the next city so the problem become’s someone else’s.”

Serena claimed that the pickpockets were 90% Romanians—even way back then. They can’t afford to live in Venice, but stay with friends in apartments on the mainland with the gang leader. The boss, he said, makes a lot of money and owns a restaurant and hotel back in Romania. After the leader was deported to Romania, the pickpocket gang was not as successful. The leader had guided the team, telling them when/where/who to hit.

The past few years, Cittadini non Distratti has complained that pickpocketing in Venice is getting much worse.

In July 2013, the frustrated group announced that they were photographing known pickpockets and posting their pictures around the city. According to recent news reports, Cittadini non Distratti is still active, still saving tourists from pickpockets.