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>Much worse than Rome or Paris for example. Anecdotally, I think the opposite is true. There are far more noticeable scammers and pickpockets in for example to
by cr1895 10y ago
>Much worse than Rome or Paris for example.
Anecdotally, I think the opposite is true. There are far more noticeable scammers and pickpockets in for example touristy areas of Paris, or even its metros.
It's surprisingly hard for me to find concrete data on this, however. I'm curious to know.
- jakub_g 10y agoI can confirm on Paris. Been to Paris, Barcelona, Rome, Amsterdam, Lisbon, and Paris has been definitively the worst, with all the scammers around Eiffel Tower and Sacre Coeur. Lisbon also felt a bit weird in some places. All the other cities were fine, though I've heard many stories from my colleagues about Barcelona.
- emmelaich 10y agoScammers yes worse in Paris, but not pickpockets in my experience. Might have been lucky. TBH probably depends what time of the year and where you go. What really annoys me is the acceptance of these cities with their existence. Amsterdam trams will warn you whether there are pickpockets on board (zakkenrollers). So they're easy to spot by the locals. But I've never seen real policing. I have seen pickpockets do almost full body searches on unsuspecting tourists on crowded trams. And they get very menacing when they know that you know what they're up to.
- cr1895 10y agoWhat can they do? It's obviously in the city's interest to squash the pick-pocketing as much as possible, but it's not easy to police against. It's like bike theft. Bikes get stolen all the time but there's little that can be done to stop it. I tend to avoid areas where they'd congregate and I don't especially look like a tourist, so there's probably some confirmation bias at play.
- pmoriarty 10y agoWhat about using surveillance cameras? I presume that pickpockets aren't going around wearing masks, so it should be possible to identify them from surveillance camera footage, no?
- cr1895 10y agoStations and even heavily trafficked parts of the RLD are already covered with cameras, so they're clearly only so effective.
- posterboy 10y agoI take it you didn't read any discworld novells. There, the thieves guild is allowed a low ratio of unprocecuted thieving in return for their protection from unlicensed thieves.