A young man is on the crowded subway, with his backpack on his back, when a woman stealthily opens the outside zipper of the backpack and bingo! take out a wallet and an iPhone 14 Pro Max. In another place, an older adult is walking down the street, with his winter jacket, and when he stops to open a heavy door in a business, a man approaches him from behind, and without the grandfather noticing, he quickly pushes He puts his hand in one of the pockets of his jacket and takes it out with a loot: a high-end Samsung phone, and then, “very kindly,” he even helps him enter the place. On a crowded escalator, a woman is talking on her cell phone, while she is holding a brand name purse on her right arm, and so fainta guy unzips his bag, grabs a large purse, and zips it back up, all in less than 10 seconds.
The scenes, which although in several Latin American cities are familiar and are described by many residents as their daily bread, on behalf of the so-called “pickpockets” or “ticklers”, They did not occur in Bogotá, nor in Caracas, nor in Buenos Aires, nor in Guayaquil, nor in Lima, nor in Santo Domingo. These robberies occurred in New York.
And despite the fact that New Yorkers like Julia Mancera, who has lived in the Big Apple for 14 years, say that for a long time they felt that in most of the five boroughs you could walk around with a feeling of tranquility with bags, backpacks and cell phones, because pickpockets were conspicuous by their absence, the perception is that things have changed, a lot, especially in recent months.
“The truth is I am very shocked with so much robbery now on the train. Without exaggeration, sometimes I feel as if I were in Colombia, where on the buses and in certain streets of the capital, there are gangs that steal cell phones and wallets without you realizing it and without being able to walk calmly,” says the woman from Bogotá, who in 2023 became a victim of pickpockets operating on public transportation in New York City. “Just here, on the 7 train, going to Jackson Heights, they took my wallet out of my backpack, and I didn’t even realize it. And two weeks ago, in the middle of December, a friend took the subway, and she arrived at her house without her cell phone, and her husband without her wallet, they took it out of her pants pocket. I think thieves are increasing.”
But the victim’s feeling of “other people’s friends,” who chose not to report the incident, is not just a feeling. Pickpocket thefts are on the rise.
This is confirmed by the New York City police (NYPD)not only because the arrests of pickpockets have increased but because until November 2023 alone, this type of robbery had more than 2,200 cases, not including the good part of thefts that victims prefer to leave without filing complaints with the authorities. In 2022, the reported victims were below 2,000.
And in their eagerness to put a stop to stealth thieves, last year the NYPD decided to reactivate the Unit against Pickpockets, which had disappeared several years ago, and whose goal is to identify, Search and catch the so-called “ticklers” who operate in the city.
“We follow statistics, we see the exact hours that pickpockets like to work. They usually like to operate where there are a lot of people, during peak hours, usually. In the mornings, in traffic, between 6 to 10, and in the afternoon, between 2 and 6 (…) these robberies have always happened, but lately they have increased a little,” says the Lieutenant Jonathan Cedeño, head of the NYPD Anti-Pickpocket Unit. “Also, they like to work at stations where there are a lot of people, like Times Square, Grand Central and we have a big problem at 74th Street and Roosevelt Avenue. “They like places where there are crowds of people, because it is easier for them to mix with people.”
Plainclothes NYPD officers roam trains, streets and stations looking for pickpockets. Edwin Martinez
And when talking about mode of operation of this type of thieves, Lieutenant Cedeño revealed several details, among them, that they do not operate alone but in organized groups, in which there are even minorsand some even use small children to avoid suspicion.
“These people never work alone, always in teams of two, three and even five and six people. One distracts the victim, while another covers the act and another is reaching into his pocket or wallets. They usually exchange positions and go for wallets, cell phones that are worth more than $1,000 and that they sell in whole or in parts in other countries, and we have unfortunately seen cases where adults use their children to block, because if someone’s phone is stolen and goes to a child who touches them or an elderly woman, they are not going to think that they are being robbed,” commented the head of the Anti-Pickpocket Unit.
The lieutenant adds that since the group against this crime was revived, which has its control center in the Times Square subway station, where officers are constantly looking at images captured by cameras placed, not only there but in other parts of the transit system, arrests have increased. Only in the subway and surrounding streets is 41 suspected thieves have been arrestedsome of them on multiple occasions, both men and women, Latinos, African Americans, Europeans, pickpockets originating from Romania, Jamaica, Ecuador, Colombia and Venezuela.
“They do not use force to carry out the robberies, they are not violent, and it is not that they dress in a specific way, but they like to carry extra clothing with them that they take off and put on. Sometimes they walk around with newspapers that they use to cover when they reach into their pockets and purses, and when we stop them, they say ‘I didn’t do anything.’ “They try to throw away what they have stolen,” says officer Cedeño, while revealing that they have identified at least 100 pickpocketsmany of them repeat offenders, because some judges do not prosecute them or send them to jail, sometimes causing the work of the NYPD to be almost lost. Some pickpockets have even been “working” for decades..
“Usually these people have such bad skills, which is part of their lives. They do it and they do it again in the future, and that’s why we made this team to fight against those types of scammers, because we hope that the more arrests we make, the chances that the judges will put them in jail for a long time and do not leave them on the streets, they will increase,” said Cedeño. “There have been cases in which we have arrested people that judges have left in jail for months, to see if they stop doing it.”
From the NYPD operations center in Times Square, members of the Anti-Pickpocket Unit monitor the installed cameras. Photo: Edwin Martinez.
The expert in the fight against cell phone and wallet thieves also asked New Yorkers to be “watch out for pickpockets” and be very attentive with their belongings, while inviting those who are victims of these thefts to report and collaborate with the authorities. so that judicial processes can be carried out, because otherwise, despite the fact that there are arrests without the support of those who suffer the thefts, the immediate destiny will be to return to their old ways.
“You have to be more alive, more energetic with the people around you, not put your phones and wallets in the back of your backpacks, because that makes the job easier for pickpockets, especially now in the winter, when More cases occur, and since the jackets are so big, many don’t even feel when the phone is taken out. Therefore, if there are internal pockets, better, put your things there so that they have more protection and thus make the job of stealing from pickpockets more difficult,” said the officer.
“When we make arrests, in most cases we have been able to return the victims’ belongings, and in those moments, our priority is to stay with the victim, because If there is no victim there is no case. We ask them to speak with the prosecutor’s offices. Sometimes they don’t want to follow the case and they just tell us ‘thank you’, and that is a problem and we ask them to help us when the prosecutor calls and says that they didn’t give the pickpockets permission to have their property, that’s all, to stop. to be able to put them in jail and not do it again, but if the victim does not want to do it, then it will cause the arrest to be erased from the system and they can commit crimes again,” he warned. Lieutenant Cedeno.
NYPD Lieutenant Jonathan Cedeño, head of the NYPD’s Anti-Pickpocket Unit. Photo: Edwin Martinez.
Pickpockets in the Big Apple in figures
- 2,200 victims 2023
- There were fewer than 2,000 victims in 2022
- The Unit against Pickpockets made 41 arrests last year
- 8 arrests were in the subway
- 32 were carried out in nearby streets
- 4 arrests were made on the day of the Rockefeller lighting, 1 of them a minor with 12 cell phones
- 2021 began to see an increase in pickpocket robberies
- 100 individuals have already been identified
- 6 people operate on each band even
2024-01-08 11:00:00
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