yenrod said:
I bet when you reached for your wallet you breathed a sigh of relief
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I was in Venice once and in St Marks Square one of our group got pick pocketed...
I reached with trepedation into my pocket to see if I still had mine...not the best of feelings.
Still, we all chipped in for our group member to get by whilst they sorted themselves out !
I didn't have my wallet with me, actually the worst thing you can do is check to see if your wallet is still where it should be, from professional experience, these gangs operate in a very organised way, they have spotters, lifters and swifters, once someone gets done the natural reaction is for others in the group to check that their purse/wallet is still in pocket purse, this alerts the spotters to exactly where your purse wallet is.
In our case we were probably followed from the restauarant we had just eaten in, we were only ywo days into our stay, were obviously still 'white' therefore possibly 'green' .
I was annoyed with myself, having seen the distraction where the MIL was bumped into I missed the transition, I saw her handbag had been unzipped, upon checking her purse was missing, saw the lad who had bumped her stood in the open fronted shop where she had been, he was looking at ladies jewellery, which was odd, I looked to the till where the assistant nodded to me, indicating that she knew/seen what had happened.
I approached the lad, spoke to him, another male with him walked away I grabbed the lad I had seen do the bump hoping the purse was still on him, I put him in an approved arm restraint which he didn't expect or appreciate, making silly noises, I searched him, the shop owner called the Guardia at my request.
Within minutes two women and the other lad turned up at the shop protesting loudly, but not too loudly (funny how shite always looks the same wherever you are)
The Guardia Civil rocked up soon after, and I had to try and explain what had happened, annoyingly the shop lady who had nodded indicating to me that she had seen the theft take place, wasn't playing the game with the Guardia and wasn't going to get involved now.
The Guardia bloke spoke to the women who 'apparently' were on 'holiday' too, he didn't do any checks, he didn't use his radio to pass their details to a control room to check them against the Spanish equivilent of the PNC, all he wanted was my name and passport number and where I was staying, he didn't give me a crime reference number.
Then things took a turn and it looked like I was going to end up getting swifted and spending the night in some dodgy Mallorcan police cell, Guardia bloke told me If I apologised to the Thief and the women they wouldn't make a complaint.
What do you do? I chose my words carefully which were no doubt helped by the fact it was being translated, I didn't apologise to them, but I made it appear that I had, as I didn't want to be locked up.
I was angry as I knew what I had seen, but Guardia bloke wasn't interested, he wanted a quiet life no doubt, and the fact that my apparent apology settled matters just confirmed that the thieving scummy tw@ts didn't really want to make too much fuss either, but as I said before Shite looks the same wherever you are, and they were thieving shite, and no mistake.
