[jasdeepsingh]

I think a city like Barcelona, with their theft and crime problem can make use of some sort of surveillance.

Just two weeks ago, 3 hours before ending my vacation in the city, Me and my wife were robbed off roughly worth $10k USD in a car tire puncture scam.

http://tourist-scams.com/tourist-scam-destinations/barcelona...

[franciscop]

This kind of things are rarely problems for locals* , so I can see how they might be a low priority for the government/police. Instead, solving poverty issues+better education seems to be a better solution (for me and for the cities) than trying to make it into a police state.

Example: one of the safest places in Spain I've seen are libraries in Universities. People leave their laptops and go to the toilet/for lunch and nothing happens. The unsafest places I'd say are beaches, clubs and main statios.

* which happens all around the world. I never thought I'd be scammed like this, being from Spain, but I was scammed in Vietnam!

[dsfyu404ed]

This. People generally prefer to make an honest buck but when honest bucks are few and far between skimming your cut off the people who pass through using whatever means necessary becomes very attractive.

You even see this dynamic in in college towns where the college town and associated services are generally ok but all the surrounding communities run speed traps like their going out of style in order to skim a few bucks off of all the people passing through as a result of the college and the commerce it generates.

A healthy local economy generally prevents too many people from trying to make a dishonest buck.

[ljm]

At least for Barcelona the theft is incredibly organised, and with the assumption that a passing tourist will just pay to replace their phone or use their insurance, the theft itself might be far more lucrative than whatever honest buck is available.

It is generally only the tourists that are targeted, to the point where some people will tell you to yell at the assailant in Spanish to guilt them into giving your stuff back to show you're not one of the people they should be stealing from.

To show how bizarre this can be, on a purely anecdotal level, I was jumped in Barcelona more than once, and even with the opportunity to take my wallet and cash they ignored it and went only for the phone. Physical violence is avoided, more often than not.

Barcelona in particular has had an anti-tourism mentality for quite some time (and not without good reason) so a lot of this petty crime appears to exist as a result of that. This is just from experience of living there a few years, though.

Surveillance and police presence won't really solve this because of how sneaky the theft can be (e.g. knifing your pocket or rucksack while you sleep on the metro and sliding your phone out), the best deterrent is your own awareness. Good luck with that if you're out there to party.

Of course, the same can be said for any country enjoying its influx of wealthy tourists. Barcelona isn't unique in this.

[jerkstate]

in my experience, there's a tradeoff curve with "honesty" of income on one axis and time/effort spent per money on the other axis, and different people have different curves (at different times in their lives.)

[cascom]

Just ask my local police department - no point in pissing off your neighbors and voters issuing tickets when you can stick it to people passing through...

[farresito]

Sorry to hear you were robbed 10k. I'm not sure how much we can solve the robbing problem with surveillance.

I can talk a bit about the typical robbing that occurs in the more touristic places in the city. The police is very much aware of who the robbers are, and in fact most of them have been caught dozens of times, if not hundreds; they simply don't get punished, except with a small fine, so they keep doing it. It's disgraceful.

[kartan]

> they simply don't get punished, except with a small fine, so they keep doing it. It's disgraceful.

Violent thieves (robbers) get punished. Non-violent theft is treated more lightly unless is done on a big scale. This gives criminals a high incentive to not be violent.

I have heard that the theory is that if you hard punish any thief, then thieves are going to be more violent to not get caught. If you focus the police force on violent crime, then violent crime goes down.

Most criminals know that if they give themselves in when caught, they will get a more favourable sentence that if they resist.

The goal is to keep people safe first, then property. To punish criminals is a means to that goal, but just that. I think that in the USA there is a moral component where punishing criminals is a moral imperative, even if this causes worse crime or if people get wrongly punished. Or, at least, that is what I interpret from the news.

[narag]

We have a number of holes in our legal system. The cause is not what you say, even if it's very reasonable. The cause is where we came from and technical debt after so many years of patches. We suffered a dictatorship until 1975. The climate was against police and pro-reo. It was good to abolish capital punishment and other relics. But we swinged too much the other way. A more dramatic example is how people under 18 can get away with rape and murder, just a slap in the wrist. Also parole is almost a given after doing half the sentence. So effectively our longest punishment is 15 years. That has changed for rapists and terrorists, but it's basically true for most other crimes.

[ardit33]

No it is not that. The main reason is that even if you get caught stealing you only get something like 15- 30days of jail. It is like a two week vacation for a pocket picker, then they are out again.

In SouthEastern countries they get 1, 2 or up 4 years in jail. Guess, what? There is less of them in the streets and if they are less likely to do it again.

So, being too lenient in crime creates the nightmare that Barcelona is, and draws in criminals from the rest of Europe (it is still a very beautiful city to visit).

http://documentaryheaven.com/scam-city-barcelona/

[madeofpalk]

> In SouthEastern [...] there is less of them in the streets and if they are less likely to do it again.

Really? Of course only anecdotally, I've always had a worse impression of this 'street crime' in SEA than in places like Barcelona.

[ardit33]

Romania vs Spain, Spain is clearly worse crime wise. https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_countries_result.jsp?co...

When you compare Bucharest (the capital city) with Barcelona, Barcelona fares a lot worse.

https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_cities.jsp?country1=Rom...

Index Info Bucharest | Barcelona

Crime Index: 28.48 | 45.08

Safety Scale: 71.52 | 54.92

I know, by reputation the Balkan Region doesn't look good, but when you look at the data it paints a totally different picture. My hunch is that a lot of petty thieves types have moved into Western Europe as the business is more lucrative there.

[kartan]

http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Crime/Violent...

Position ... Murder rate per million

74 Romania 19.6 2009

102 Spain 8.69 2009

Your numbers are not in contradiction with my reasoning. More pretty thief is more crime, but it is less violent crime.

[MandieD]

numbeo is a measurement of perceptions of crime, not actual crime rates. Looking at Stockholm vs. Jeddah (Saudi Arabia), Stockholm comes off the worse for safely walking at night.

[madeofpalk]

Oh, apologies. I thought you meant south east Asia. I've never thought of crime in Romania.

[StudentStuff]

Citations?

[ardit33]

https://www.numbeo.com/crime/compare_countries_result.jsp?co...

[rock_hard]

Agree. I installed a Nest Camera to keep my garage and car safe...guess what: they broke into my garage anyways and all I got is a useless video of it.

Camera’s are not a solution to stop crime!

One thing I gotta say though is that it helped with figuring out what got stolen ;)

[cleansy]

London is one of the most surveilled cities that I can think of and yet I saw or heard of people getting robbed/pickpocketed on a monthly basis.

I would argue that only more police force would help with that.

[stuaxo]

Cutting 20k police over the last few years probably hasn't helped.

[hartator]

I got got credit card scammed there as well by people faking being cops.

[fokinsean]

Geez that's a bummer. My wife and I are going this summer and I've been researching all of the different scams. Definitely going to get a belt wallet for me and her, it sounds like pick pocketing is the most common issue.

[ljm]

I did this before I relocated there for a few years. It will raise your blood pressure and you'll be trying so hard to protect yourself from one scam that you'll get hit by another, and by the time you've done researching you'll have so little trust that you might see everything as a potential robbery.

Enjoy your time there, it's a beautiful city! Just make sure to minimise your risk by limiting what you carry around with you and never take your eyes off it. That way if you do get unlucky, you can still recover from it.

[fokinsean]

Word, skateboarding has taught me to be relatively street smart and aware so I'm not _too_ worried. Can't wait to visit and thanks for the advice!

[gaius]

Within 5 minutes of arriving in Barcelona, a friend of mine was pickpocketed. Slick operation, 2 pretty girls as distraction and a boy to do the deed. We grabbed him and he gave it back and then the three of them just wandered off as if it was nothing. Which I suppose for them it was. This was in the main train station so there were cameras, cops around, clearly no deterrent.

[kzrdude]

My experience with Barcelona too, I witnessed a botched pickpocketing attempt just to the person next to me, when arriving to Plaza Catalunya. Way to give a bad first impression, after that the rest of the week was fine.

[newnewpdro]

Why are you traveling with $10k worth of valuables? Did they steal your personal vehicle?

[jasdeepsingh]

Apple Macbook Pro 15: $4600 (Mine) Apple Macbook Pro 13: $2600 (Wife’s) Ipad Pro: $1000 Versace Glasses: $400 Ray Ban: $300 Airpods: $250 Cash: $1300 Backpack: $150 Apple Fast Charger: $50 Fast Charging Brick: $45

The nice thing out of this incident was that I was able to transfer my Apple Care from my Apple Devices to my new replacement devices.

[et-al]

Camera/video equipment can add up pretty quickly.

Even nicer everyday items can quickly amount to over $500 USD. E.g. shoes (150), 3x wool socks (45), 3x dress shirts (180), jeans (100), sunglasses (150).

[newnewpdro]

Sure, if you've got a huge entourage and this adds up to the order of $10k through simple multiplication of necessary items I can understand.

But if it's just a couple on vacation? Please do not create such incentives for the robbery tourists. Leave the $5k timepiece and bail money at home.

[madeofpalk]

If this didn't happen to you, would you still think this way?

[pfisch]

If you just walk in looking like a tourist to almost any metro car in barcelona people will attempt to rob you. I have never been to a place with so much blatant crime and I am from New Orleans.

https://www.worldnomads.com/travel-safety/europe/spain/barce...

The low level crime is absolutely insane in barcelona to the point I would recommend not going unless you are ready to get in shoving matches with attempted thieves.

[philipps]

I would absolutely recommend visiting. Barcelona is one of the most incredible cities in the world. Do a little research on the different areas. Don’t carry around 10k of valuables! And don’t leave your stuff lying around on the beach. Have an amazing time!

[apcragg]

What the hell are you talking about. That has never been my experience nor the experience of people I know that have been there within the past 2 years. Don't fearmonger about crime.

[pfisch]

I'm not fear mongering at all. I was there for like 3-4 days and had upwards of 3 encounters with people attempting to separate and rob my group on the metro.

That is insane. I'm not like some country bumpkin either, I am from New Orleans and so was my entire group. We didn't get robbed because we had to become physically aggressive with these groups of people and get in shoving matches and shit. It was ridiculous.

I have never experienced so much rampant theft in my life and I am fairly well traveled.

There are beautiful sights in Barcelona, but I doubt I will ever go back because it is completely lawless.

I have had gun fights happen right outside my house in New Orleans, almost everyone I know was mugged at some point growing up, there was an attempted rape in my driveway once, but it still has nothing on the volume of crime I witnessed in Barcelona.

[BrainInAJar]

What's that Franklin quote trading liberty for security and deserving neither? ...

[brann0]

> Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.

[js2]

FWIW, that quote's context is far from how it's often used today.

https://www.npr.org/2015/03/02/390245038/ben-franklins-famou...

> WITTES: The exact quotation, which is from a letter that Franklin is believed to have written on behalf of the Pennsylvania General Assembly, reads, those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety.

> SIEGEL: And what was the context of this remark?

> WITTES: He was writing about a tax dispute between the Pennsylvania General Assembly and the family of the Penns, the proprietary family of the Pennsylvania colony who ruled it from afar. And the legislature was trying to tax the Penn family lands to pay for frontier defense during the French and Indian War. And the Penn family kept instructing the governor to veto. Franklin felt that this was a great affront to the ability of the legislature to govern. And so he actually meant purchase a little temporary safety very literally. The Penn family was trying to give a lump sum of money in exchange for the General Assembly's acknowledging that it did not have the authority to tax it.

> SIEGEL: So far from being a pro-privacy quotation, if anything, it's a pro-taxation and pro-defense spending quotation.

> WITTES: It is a quotation that defends the authority of a legislature to govern in the interests of collective security. It means, in context, not quite the opposite of what it's almost always quoted as saying but much closer to the opposite than to the thing that people think it means.