The pickpocket/scam/street crime that has plagued cities like Rome may lessen with newly elected Pres Berlosconi yesterday, i believe, making a sweep that resulted in the arrests of many African and Romanian immigrants who apparently account for a good deal of the street crime.
At least that's what Berlosconi is promising in his crack down on crime. Hopefully tourists will no longer be easy targets for these types whereas before they would i guess be arrested and back on the streets the same day.

My business partner visited Italy in 1994 and had an Albanian try to steal a travel bag. They wrestled in the street until the Italian police broke it up and arrested the Albanian. Apparently this is a somewhat common problem.

I think it is a good move, and long overdue.

Posting these things always makes me feel a little guilty about picking on poor immigrants who i realize are hard up, etc. I have nothing against immigrants in Italy or elsewhere and don't want to paint them all with the same brush

but yes the situation in Rome at least, whose muggings are said even to rival the likes of Barcelona and Madrid, demands that something be done and one wonders why it wasn't done before, like when Berlosconi was president before

I was very wary of Rome, and expected to be constantly pickpocketed, based on what I had read here and many other places prior to my trip.

However, neither my mom nor I had a problem with this, even at the Trevi Fountain on May Day, when it was wall-to-wall people. Having said that, we walked everywhere and did not take any bus or metro rides.

We did see one lady, on the road leading to St. Peter's, chasing a man who apparently grabbed her entire bag and was running down the road with it. Unfortunately, she was not able to get it back from him. We held on much more tightly to our bags after that, and mostly, we were lucky, I guess.

Ah yes, the promises of those running for office or newly elected. Wouldn't it be terrific if all the promises were kept?

We've never had a problem in Italy, though a friend who was with us on our first visit was robbed. It seems the brutality of being robbed has escalated since that time. There were pickpockets and other thieves, but most victims were never beaten or physically harmed. Apparently that is no longer the case.

I sincerely hope Berlosconi will follow through with these sweeps and clean up the crime.

I wonder if these 'sweeps' are also targeting the African trinket sellers who spread their blanket and wares on the streets - i guess breaking laws since they tend to scurry when police are seen

I am not advocating a crack down on these harmless types but their numbers are proliferating such that they are just too omnipresent in tourist venues IMO - ditto for the S Asian umbrella salesmen and car windshield washers and flower sellers, etc.

I know these are poor folk scraping together a living but they kind of ruin the ambiance of a place like the Trevi or the large piazzas

I toured Italy in 1979 and in 1996 and found one of the changes was the amount of African/Moslem trinket sellers. A bigger change, however, was that Italy's mid-day "siesta"(is that the right term?) seemed to have faded away by 1996. Standardization of Europe?

"Berlosconi Cleans Up Immigrant Crooks"

Is this because he doesn't want competition?

You beat me by a few minutes with that comment, travelgourmet.
Guess I was still in a state of amazement reading the thread...

Just heard a report on NPR on this subject. Seems that people like the Roma (gypsies) or Albanians can't be deported unless they've been convicted of a crime because they're from the EU and have the right to live wherever they want in the EU. There was an incident in Naples this week where a Roma was caught trying to steal a six-month-old baby from a home, which incited great protest at a nearby Roma shanty town, which was set on fire eventually. There were coordinated sweeps of these shanty towns all over Italy today, but it certainly won't solve the crime problem with any finality.

<I know these are poor folk scraping together a living but they kind of ruin the ambiance of a place like the Trevi or the large piazzas>

On our first trip to Italy we weren't troubled with all these "sales people." The last time we were in Rome we were barely seated at an outside cafe in Piazza Navona when the flower sellers descended upon us. Same was true in Piazza Rotunda. That was about 5-6 years ago--I can't imagine what it must be like now.

I'm amazed that EU countries have no say in who crosses their borders and how many immigrants they can handle. Of course, we don't belong to the EU and that seems to be the case here in California!

Th EU countries had a say! They have accepted Eastern European countries as members knowing full well that immigrants will flow from the East to the West. The incentives offered, if any, to any Roma minority, to stay in the East are minimal compared to the living they make stealing in the West.

Citizens of the EU are allowed to roam freely within any of the member countries up to a cummulative number of 90 days in a semester. Extra days would count as illegal immigration and as punishment they will be sent home. Same goes for violating the host country's laws. Having open borders makes it kind of hard to document the 90 days.

Oh no! The gypsies are upon us!

Yes, it is as ridiculous as it sounds.

Any European politician that blames Romas (or Turks or other immigrant group) for crime is just pandering and has no plan for addressing crime. They either don't care about crime or are too stupid to realize that their actions do nothing to combat the root causes.

"It seems the brutality of being robbed has escalated since that time. There were pickpockets and other thieves, but most victims were never beaten or physically harmed. Apparently that is no longer the case."

this is what they say about San Francisco, and I beleive other US cities, unfortunately

Something needs to be done and the situations is getting out of hands.

Most of the times if a crime or a murder occurred ,the Roms are the culpits.

The people are getting fed up of whats happening to italy, Can you blame them?.

There is an English version of the repubblica.

www.repubblica.it/esteri/index.html

this is the right link..Just click on Translate and the new will be in English.

Esteri - Repubblica.it- Translate

The Italians we talked to on a recent trip to Rome all said things have gotten worse since the Eastern Europeans gained entrance to EU.

They also had one word for Berloscioni and his friends : 'crooks"

His name is Berlusconi.

Pal, I haven't read all of the posts on this thread but..Silvio Berlosconi is the Prime Minister of Italy, not the President.

Now I will read the posts.