Venice’s crime-fighting vigilante falls prey to purse-snatchers
HER famous cry of pickpocket!” has made her a social media star, with fans even producing an online dance music track based on her signature catchphrase.
But Monica Poli, Venice’s crime-fighting vigilante, has now become a victim of the very thieves she targets.
She was attacked by a group as she yelled at them while they attempted to rifle through the backpack of an unsuspecting tourist over the Easter weekend.
She told Italian media she had just left some friends to patrol the area near the railway station when she spotted two men and a woman acting suspiciously.
After she shouted “here they are ladies and gentlemen, pickpockets”, one of the two men pushed her and hurled insults at her, Ms Poli said.
“As I always do, I intervened, with a disturbance,” she told The Telegraph. “There were loads of tourists so if someone didn’t intervene, they would have stolen tens of wallets. I was filming them when one of the men turned against me, insulting me, pushing me and laying his hands on me.”
Another tourist intervened, she said, to stop the attack.
Ms Poli, who is a city councillor for the Right-wing Lega party, is a member of a volunteer civilian patrol called Cittadini Non Distratti, or “Undistracted Citizens”, who have been responsible for a third of the arrests for pickpocketing in the city.
Dubbed the “Guardian Angels of Tourists”, they take pictures of the thieves and yell warnings to alert people to their presence.
“There have always been pickpockets in Venice, but it has gotten much worse in recent years,” Ms Poli said.
She said it is hard to catch them redhanded, as they often run away and hide in the city they know well, even though she suspects they are not residents.
Once they are caught, she said it can take a long time for the case to come to court and since the victims are often foreigners, they don’t tend to return to testify.
She said Venice is not a dangerous city but people, especially tourists, the elderly and the disabled need to be wary about petty crime.
Ms Poli said her group has been exchanging information about the thieves and she is confident she has seen the same pickpockets caught on camera in different European cities.