Rise in pickpocketing cases on London's Underground

By BILLY ADAMS

LONDON - Asylum seekers in Britain, a group unlikely to win any national popularity contests, have found an unlikely ally - in the form of the nifty London pickpocket.

Hounded by the communities in which they have been placed, and attacked by an unwelcoming media, the immigrants have been having a tough time lately in the land they want to call home.

Some have taken to stealing commuters' purses on the London Underground in an effort to get on in life in their new country. But so bad are they at the old art of pickpocketing they almost always get caught. And because they take up so much police time, the more experienced criminals on the Tube have been going through pockets in greater numbers than ever.

Latest figures show that the number of pickpocketing offences on the Underground have shot above 10,000. That is almost double the previous year's total, and puts the brakes on a consistent decline in recent times.

Pickpocketing accounts for 55 per cent of all crime on the Underground. Almost one in three of the victims are foreign, usually tourists.

Police say the upward trend is partly because of a sudden influx of "amateur" thieves who are often immigrants, and sometimes asylum seekers. It is often children who commit the crime. Few can speak English. "These new pickpockets are less skilled and so are relatively easier to spot," said Detective Superintendent Alan Pacey of the British Transport Police. "This means that officers have been tied up dealing with these arrests. As many of them are, or claim to be, children and so need an appropriate adult present, and many require interpreters, it can be a very time-consuming process."

Meanwhile, the proper pickpockets have been having a field day elsewhere on the world's oldest tube system which ferries about three million people around the city daily.

But no longer. Forty extra police officers have been drafted in to tackle the problem, and a support unit has been set up to deal with the mountain of paperwork. Intelligence work has been stepped up, and undercover operations targeting known thieves and popular pickpocket areas increased.

"Our message to criminals operating on the Underground is clear - you will get caught," warned London Underground's managing director, Derek Smith, at the launch of the police operation.

Those words seem destined to ring hollow for some time to come. So far the crackdown has had a limited effect. A spokesman for British Transport Police said that while pickpocketing had gone down it was still at a high level.