Daylight Robbery

April 7, 2008 · Filed Under Life in Italy · Comment 

A friend of ours fell victim to the wandering Rom boys yesterday. She lost her purse and fifty Euros. Luckily there was no important documentation in the purse at the time.

The Rom boys, generally from one of the Gypsy camps on the outskirts of Milan, often hunt in packs and pick on women and anyone else who they think won’t resist. They are a nuisance more than anything else and tend to ‘target’ particular areas of Milan one at a time, almost as if they were following some kind of petty theft business plan.

These packs of thieves are often busy around Milan’s main railway stations, especially Stazione Centrale, as I noted in my Watch It! post last year.

There seems to be something of a rash of similar incidents at the moment too, and another more recent incident was reported in my Mugging in Milan post. Personally, I’ve lost a bicycle and a briefcase here. And I keep hearing about people losing wallets all the time, and more often than not they are Italians.

Many Italian women keep their handbags over their shoulders and away from the street side of the sidewalk/pavement. This is to avoid the attentions of the scallywags on scooters who have a penchant for pinching handbags.

Mobile phones have also been known to be wrenched from the hands of users here.

Milan is generally pretty safe, and even though it has many more police in evidence than most places in the UK, it pays to be wary.

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Mugging in Milan

February 21, 2008 · Filed Under Milan · 2 Comments 

This post has been updated to make it more accurate - Alex Roe, 22.02.1008.

I was rather worried to learn from the guy I work with that he had been mugged a couple of weeks back.

As if mugging in any circumstances were not bad enough, this case is worse. You see, this guy was attacked in the centre of Milan in the Duomo underground stop, on a Sunday, and while he was with his little daughter.

Apparently, while he was getting on a train, he was brought down rugby style, and then held down while an accomplice stole his wallet from his back pocket.

As you do after such an event, you head off to the nearest police station to report the miscreants. And as he arrived at the police station, my friend found himself in the midst of a whole group of people who had also been victims of what was a well organised and executed mass mugging.

The other victims were a mixture of foreigners and Italians alike, and many had lost money, credit cards, and important personal documents. The muggers, and there were five or six, my friend told met, were in their mid-thirties and may have been Italian.

In view of the brazen nature of these attacks, it should have been possible for the police to have caught up with the criminals. No such luck.

My friend suggested that the police use the CCTV system to identify the perpetrators, but was surprised to discover that the underground station video surveillance cameras were not working on the day of this rash of nasty attacks. Great, not.

In view of this potential problem, and I don’t know if action has been taken, it would be a good idea to carry two wallets if you venture into the centre of Milan via the underground railway system, the yellow line, at the moment. Put one in your back pocket, in which you can put 10 Euros or so, and hide the other in a less obvious place. Then, in the event of a mugging, at least the thieves would think they had got what they were after.

On no account try to remonstrate with these interesting gentlemen. Unless you are Rambo, you will most likely come off very badly.

Just watch you back, and keep your eyes open for signs of unwanted attention down in the underground stations, and, if something does raise your suspicions, keep your wits about you.

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Robbed!

February 21, 2007 · Filed Under Milan - My Zone · 9 Comments 

Damnation!  Last night while I was waiting for a bus I put my briefcase on the ground for a moment, got my Pocket PC out to check a phone number and then put the Pocket PC back into the back and got a mobile out to look up a number.  Then I  noticed that the bus was arriving, so I turned round to pick up my briefcase.  Only it was not there.  It had disappeared into thin air.  I neither heard no saw anything, and neither, apparently, did the other people waiting for the bus.  I could not believe it.  I rang the police, but since I had not seen anyone, they would not send anyone to me.  Not a great surprise, I suppose.

In the bag was my highly useful Axim x30h pocket PC, a useful dictionary, all my teaching cards and a text book, plus a register for a course I am holding at the moment.  Boy am I miffed.  But what really gets me is that a did not notice a thing.  I was distracted for no more than five minutes.  Heaven knows who took the thing.

Afterwards I went to a local police station to make a statement, but I doubt I will see the bag ever again, and as for the Pocket PC, well, that may as well have been eaten by an elephant.  I will not see it again.

Unbelievable.  Whoever it was must have been close by and must have noticed the Pocket PC, as I doubt whether and Italian/English financial dictionary will fetch that much on the black market.  I did notice a guy at the bus stop who was on his mobile, but I don’t think there was any connection between his call and my loss, but you never know.

Moral of the story: Don’t flash hi-tech gadgetry around and keep tight hold of your possessions while you are in Milan.  You live and you learn.

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