Stinging Innocents Abroad

By J.D. Reed

Shirley Merchant of Danvers, Mass., was sight seeing at the Sacre-Coeur church in Paris when a friend warned her to watch her purse. Too late. The carefully zippered compartment inside her shoulder bag had been deftly picked. "It was all gone," she says. "My cash, traveler's checks, passport and every piece of identification I had."

It is a perennial tourist nightmare, one that Karl Malden uses to sell traveler's checks on TV. Now, with a record number of bargain-hunting Americans in Europe, purse snatching, currency rip-offs and sophisticated new scams in some cities are growing as fast as the influx of visitors. Thieves are operating in formerly safe sites such as Paris' Latin Quarter and even idyllic Stratford-upon-Avon. Refunds for missing American Express Travelers Cheques have climbed by a significant margin. "The British don't want to advertise," says Dick Haegeley, chief of the Passport and Citizen's Unit at the American embassy in London, "but they should have a sign when you step off the plane: BEWARE OF PICKPOCKETS." In Paris they are operating in overdrive. Reports of lost and stolen American passports are up as much as 20% compared with last year, and, while Paris' Police Judiciaire has not released figures, it indicates that last year's 44,725 reported picked pockets will be easily surpassed.

Most officials agree that street crime is being fueled by growing drug abuse in some locations, high unemployment in many countries and the tempting presence everywhere of foreign innocents, many on their first trips abroad. "You have to learn what's going on in a city and how to behave there," says Keith Harding, an American embassy staffer in Paris, "but tourists don't do it."

Gangs of Gypsy youngsters menace Paris Metro riders by picking them clean in seconds, and purse snatchers on mopeds plague the Champs-Elysees. Says Paris Police Judiciaire Commissioner Claude Bard: "Paris is as bad as Rome, if not worse." Indeed, while scooter-riding bandits in the Italian capital still lift bags from foreign shoulders along the Via Nazionale, the petty-crime rate has actually dropped slightly, owing to increased police vigilance. One golden * oldie that still works: thieves slightly puncture a rental car's tire, and when a flat develops on the Autostrada del Sole, they pull alongside, offering to help change the tire. Before a victim can say grazie, his luggage is out of the trunk and speeding down the road. Bolder thieves on the outskirts of Seville, Spain, smash the car windows of cathedral-bound sightseers stopped at traffic lights and snatch purses in the resulting panic. London's light- fingered sophisticates are so prevalent on Oxford Street, home of department stores, that Selfridges broadcasts reminders to watch out for them, and an American lawyer noted that he found a shocking $9,640 extra on his credit card. It turned out that an unscrupulous ticket broker in London had charged him 27 times for the same pair of Cats seats.

Cleaned-out travelers face a number of hassles. Without supporting identification, replacement passports ($42) can take days to process, and airlines may take as long as six months to grant a refund on stolen tickets. Reporting crimes to police, who can display as much apathy as their big-city American counterparts, is still worthwhile. Authorities can help stop credit- card abuse, and will usually issue letters confirming losses for insurance companies. Paris police often recover wallets and purses intact with cards and passports, because most thieves are only looking for ready cash.

Many cities are moving to cut down on crime. In Rome authorities are keeping a close watch on prostitutes who specialize in fleecing foreigners, while in Paris some 150 plainclothesmen are now mixing with crowds in tourist haunts. The Spanish tourist ministry has issued a leaflet with tips on avoiding muggings. Gearing up for next month's Oktoberfest, officers in Munich, who claim their city is Europe's safest, will be on the lookout not only for German pickpockets but for American miscreants. They arrest over a hundred U.S. citizens each year during the beery festival. The offense: drunk driving.

With reporting by Janet Thorpe/Paris and John Wright/London, with other bureaus