Civic guard exposes Barcelona pickpockets as theft reportedly increases exponentially

Where there are tourists, there are pickpockets.

This is also the case in Barcelona, where many visitors to the city end up leaving without a phone, wallet, passport or all three.

Some Spanish citizens say the police are doing too little to combat the issue, so they decided to take matters into their own hands.

Eliana Guerrero founded the Patrulla Ciduadana Barcelona, a civic guard group which aims to expose pickpockets.

“Our method is to monitor the metro stations and buses, and above all to make them [the pickpockets] publicly visible.,” she says, “We film them and put them on our social media channels. That hurts them the most. The police can’t do that."

Guerrero says that in recent years, the pickpocketing situation in Barcelona has become even worse – saying that both theft and violent robberies have increased exponentially.

“We want to try and make sure that the law is changed and that it will not be so easy anymore to steal a wallet or a phone without consequences.”

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