As crime has waned in the subways and New York City has seen its return to glory and riches, petty criminals are no longer turning to a career in pickpocketing, Pete Donohue reports. Transit cops say that those folks making a career out of nabbing a wallot — or an iPhone — are not the teenagers of yesteryear. Rather, they are careerists in the 40s and 50s who aren’t training a young generation of thieves. “You don’t find young picks,” Nelson Dones, a detective with the NYPD’s transit bureau, said. “It’s going to die out.”
Donohue’s article delves into the way in which cops “keep tabs” on 40 career pickpockets including a 63-year-old and a 75-year-old who “take extreme pride” in their work. No longer though are cops seeing teenagers learning the trade — a happening thirty years ago that Donohue calls an “urban apprenticeship.” I guess today’s criminals are more content with a grab-and-run than the subtlety of a pick. Anyway, no one is going to miss getting his or her pocket picked, and there’s no reason to glamorize formerly prevalent means of subway crime.
6 comments
That’s because they are getting there MBA’s in finance & going to work on Wall Street. Why pick one person at a time, when you can pick an entire corporation or country in one fell swoop.
…and not have to ride the subway with all those lowly office workers, thereby saving another $2.25 on top of the millions they steal. Ingeious!
Notice how criminals can make a mockery out of the system.
The police are keeping tabs on those “career pickpockets”,
and yet they are not in prison where they belong.
“A pick with a record can expect two years in prison if convicted of grand larceny, one undercover said.”
…
“The skells’ mug shots line a wall inside the detectives’ office.”
so, yes, they’ve been in prison
I wonder how many of them have ACTUALLY done time.
Remember that a mug shot proves only that somebody has been arrested, not that he was convicted and imprisoned.
Also remember it’s the Wall Street criminals that influence Washington & those who serve it.