Watch Your Wallets

A NEW PUBLIC tram has been up and running in Nice for about 14 months or so (photo of the new trains at left). And that's about how long it took local authorities to announce warnings on the trains about pickpockets. With 80,000 people using the train every day, it's not really surprising that criminals have begun to target the locals using public transportation.

But for police the issue is becoming more and more serious. Last week the electric boards which annnounce the train's next stop began communicating messages to passengers regarding pick-pockets. The measure was copied almost verbatum from the Paris metro.

There's something about public transportation and petty crime that just sort of goes hand-in-had. I assume this is also a problem in other French and European cities. There's probably some statistic out there ranking Europe's most unsafe metros.

CJS