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.
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