This is Paris, you know?

Of all places in Paris, the last destination I would imagine myself visiting is a police station. Well I suppose to experience the full spectrum of city life means I have to accept whatever is thrown at me - the good, the bad and the ugly.

Police on patrol at Gare Montparnasse

Stories of tourists being mugged and pickpocketed in Paris are alarming enough but to hear it coming from a police officer is quite a different matter. This time, I can speak of it from my personal experience.

Petty crime is such an everyday occurrence in the streets of Paris that the police seem to have resigned themselves to failure in dealing with this problem that is giving Paris a bad name. Bringing the culprits to justice is not in the least their interest as I was not even asked to give a physical description of the thieves who stole my wallet in the metro station. The officer on duty reprimanded me for letting my guards down and in his nonchalant manner, he told me, " This is Paris, you know?" I wanted to retort by adding,"Yes, I also know thieves target Chinese, in particular."

Tourists are easy targets for pickpocketing

A group of two teenage girls and a woman, possibly from Eastern Europe, pushed me into a semi-empty carriage and within seconds, my wallet was gone. Back home, I did a bit of digging myself and found out that these activities might have been linked to a large European network of pickpockets, mostly girls from the Balkans aged between 12 and 16.

A press report in last December revealed that the French police had broken up a network of some 100 girls which accounted for half of all cases of pickpocketing in the Paris underground metro system since 2008. It was also known that male leaders mostly kept their distance from the pickpockets, leaving the task of overseeing them to hardened female handlers who lived with them in Parisian hotels.

This sounds exactly like the trio who nicked my wallet in June this year. Mystery solved. Crimes unsolved.