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Comment by BillinghamJ | Hacker News Reader

Sadly that tradition is alive and well. Angel is a particular hot spot for it

I still remember getting my phone swiped on the sidewalk across from my favorite restaurant on Chapel Market.

(There are many words I've adopted since moving here. "Pavement" is not one of them.")

Anecdotally, for some reason, random swiping and lifting of electronics, laptops, etc. seems more prevalent in Europe than in the US. Whenever I've heard of a colleague's laptop of whatever being lifted at dinner, it's always Barcelona, Amsterdam, Brussels, etc. rather than San Francisco or New York City. I'm sure it happens in those places too but it seems less common.

I’ve lived in some really crappy places in the US, but the only place I’ve often seen and experienced people committing obvious crimes in broad daylight was Europe. It was pretty weird having someone struggle to unzip my backpack while walking down the street. I bound the zippers with a lock and they couldn’t get in, but I guess they didn’t notice because they really fought to get it open.

Seeing obvious pickpockets and scammers operating 10 feet away from police officers while being directly observed was what really blew my mind though. I hear loads of people say they’re disappointed with Europe and the crime is overwhelming these days, but man, they’re not kidding. It’s insane what’s tolerated so openly there. I don’t know anyone who hasn’t had valuables stolen randomly while in Western Europe for short periods.

I suppose it could be cultural in some way. One also wonders if it's a reflection of the situation with (especially) urban police departments and maybe gun ownership more broadly. If you know that snatching a laptop or handbag could leave you beaten, tased, or shot that's probably something of a disincentive even for not so bright petty thieves.

The guns could go either way. If someone starts mugging you in the US, there's a very real possibility a gun shows up if you try and fight back.

I personally think it is influenced by differences in the types of organized crime we have. In the US, gangs and similar organizations generally don't bother with organizing petty crime like swiping electronics. They're more focused on drugs, prostitution, etc. In Europe, though, that's not the case [1].

[1] https://www.europol.europa.eu/crime-areas-and-trends/crime-a...

I'm quite certain human trafficking and drug smuggling occur in Europe too.

https://www.dutchnews.nl/news/2017/10/some-6000-people-a-yea...

I live in one of those places (Amsterdam). It's because this isn't a practical problem for anyone living there, so why should we care to spend our tax money and police attention on it instead of crime we ourselves are affected by?

Pick-pocketing in any of the places mentioned upthread isn't some general city-wide or societal problem. It's narrowly isolated to a few tourist-trap neighborhoods, and even there only then to people who're obvious marks. Such as slow-moving tourists swarming around in groups all wearing backpacks and oblivious to their surroundings.

If you look at actual statistics on crime petty theft isn't some rampant issue in these societies.

>If you look at actual statistics on crime petty theft isn't some rampant issue in these societies.

How do you gather actual statistics when the locals don't pay attention or care, police see it but take no action, and some of the main victims (tourists) are gone in a few days and don't have the time or language skills to make a report?

My guess is that major european cities have a higher level of foot traffic which means you're more likely to have streets out of the way where a thief can make a quick escape but still find enough people walking along.

For what it's worth, I'm aware of one example of a coworker having headphones randomly swiped in Dublin (where we live), one person who got pickpocketed while on holiday in Madrid, and one person who got pickpocketed while on a work trip in San Francisco in recent years.

I think in the US it is a better risk to break into cars and steal their contents since most people have cars and treat them as an extension of their home.

Anecdotally speaking, that's because those are tourist trap cities. the person IS a tourist, is in the most touristic neighborhood possible, often in the center, and is behaving like a total tourist.

It's not a European thing, it's an "I'M OBVIOUS" thing.

I see your anecdote and raise you a "European Tourist gets off streetcar at 6th and Market St. in SF, because it's allegedly the city center and thus must be a great tourist location"...

*I'm originally American and I've lived all over Europe for over 15 years.

Heh. SF has a lot of problems these days--to the point where I'm quite a bit less enthusiastic about visiting it than I used to be. However, I suspect a lot of the "What a s*hole" reaction and general negativity you get from a lot of business travelers in particular is that they're mostly working and staying in the immediate vicinity of the Moscone which is basically the armpit of the city. (Which one might reasonably not expect to be the case especially with the Civic Center and main shopping area there too.)

People are always doing the snatch-and-run in Berkeley. Very common. It used to be that robbing undergrads was pointless but now they all have a macbook and an iphone so it's worth it.

https://www.berkeleyside.com/2019/03/19/berkeleys-caffe-stra...

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