A story in Monday’s El Periódico caught our attention, entitled “24 arrested in Barcelona after posing as policemen to rob tourists”
Foto: Circles of Confusion
The individuals were involved in 80 separate incidents, where they worked in teams of three or fours and passed themselves off as police, demanding fines from visitors to the city.
Favourite areas to target were Camp Nou, the Olympic Stadium, Palau Sant Jordi, around Montjuïc fountains, Parc Güell and Ciutat Vella.
The tactic used by the gang was to disguise one of their group as a tourist to strike up a conversation with other tourists, and at that point other gang members dressed as police officers would approach and ask for their documentation. The disguised tourist would immediately produce her passport, which resulted in the victims doing the same.
When the victims handed over their wallets, the “police” thieves would steal their cash. They would then ask for credit cards to check that the identity papers were correct. Some victims were urged to enter their PIN numbers into a mobile phone and the thieves would then simulate telephone enquiries to check the data.
The task of catching the criminals was made more difficult for the police because the robbers stay in hostels and bed & breakfasts, and move location frequently.
Four of the 24 detainees, all of whom have criminal records, were previously arrested when a similar gang of Romanian thieves was caught by the police in 2009.
Later that same day (Monday), the free daily paper 20minutos reported that 23 of the 24 were already back on the street and only one had been sent to prison.
[Thanks to Xavier from our Facebook group for pointing us to this story. We previously reported on a related story.]
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I walked out of the building where I was living at the time in Barceloneta and noticed that somebody had left a nice painting by the rubbish bins. I bent down to look at it and picked it up to have a better look. Suddenly I was surrounded by 4 or 5 youths claiming to be policemen telling me that I had been found committing the heinous crime of stealing rubbish from the rubbish bins. They told me that I should go with them to an ATM to take money out to pay the fine. They weren’t wearing uniforms and so my suspicions were immediately aroused, having heard of this ‘Fake Police’ scam before. They wouldn’t let me escape and they forced me to give them my Spanish residency number. I asked them to prove they were police and one showed me his police badge- could ‘ve been a sherriff’s badge from a kiddies’ cowboy outfit for all I knew. so I remained suspicious and started shouting to attract the attention of passersby. they eventually let me go. I left them shouting abuse in both Spainish and English. You can imagine I was pretty angry. To my utter disgust, 4 months later I received the fines through the post – one for ‘taking rubbish’ -90 euros- and the other for ‘public disorder’ 120 euros (i.e. raising my voice to try to get rid of them) . It was official. that’s the twist to this story. They really were the police- that’s my experience- of being robbed in Barcelona- by the police- the very people who should be protecting us from thieves. Seems things haven’t changed much since the Franco era and that the police here can go around harassing and bullying ordinary people with total impunity and be guaranteed total anonymity. One would think they had better things to do than intimidating and causing problems for completely innocent people in a city where real and nasty criminals are ubiquitous. But it would appear that they’re really nothing different from the bad guys themselves. don’t trust ‘em!!! This place is pretty 3rd world in many respects