The Rise of Jewelry Snatches and Pickpocketing by “Unaccompanied Minors” in Montpellier and Nîmes

“Unaccompanied minors” who are in fact young adults, foreigners from Maghreb in an irregular situation, multiply jewelry snatches and play pickpocketsin the Écusson and the suburbs, Montpellier.

“We meet them during the day, but also in the evening, in the streets of the city center, with newcomers, on the Place de la Comédie, at Plan Cabanes and in particular on the Cours Gambetta, we have indeed seen new faces since these last weeks. Obviously, they are well-informed, as they hang out in areas where habitual offenders regularly operate, including many individuals in an irregular situation. And they are getting closer to teenage girls from Eastern countries, great specialists in stealing wallets by trickery at tram stations”, assure very well-informed traders.

These bogus “unaccompanied minors” do not have identity papers and other documents allowing them to be formally identified when they are jailwhich, failing to establish their formal civil status, are released on the instructions of the public prosecutor of Montpellier and they reoffend.

The Nîmes sector

“We have noticed that these young adults who pass through Spain coming from the Maghreb countries via a channel notably manage to Nimeswhere they are housed, some in squats, take the train from the SNCF station in the Gard prefecture every day to Montpellier, where they take action, through violent acts, by snatching jewelry from pedestrians, women and men, often elderly, or by trickery, by squatting stations de tramwayparticularly in the sector of Saint-Roch train stationstealing wallets, cell phones, Bank cards, etc. They manage to read the secret code of the credit cards, when users buy tickets from TaM 3M machines. They then return to Nîmes, “reveals a source close to the investigation.

Pictures are circulating

According to our information, social workers faced with a resurgence of these acts and cases to be dealt with do not hide their concern. These new “false miners” quickly seized the mechanisms, since they steal electric bicycles, scooters, various objects, including parcels in letterboxes, which they resell illico on the markets on the sly.

Metropolitan was the recipient of photos immortalizing young delinquents, which shopkeepers circulate among themselves in the Écusson and the suburbs of Plan Cabanes and Figuerolles as a preventive measure. We have decided not to distribute them, in accordance with personal image protection law. Transmitting the image or video of an individual without having obtained their agreement is punishable by one year in prison and a fine of €15,000.

The complaints are more numerous than last year at the same time and these organized gangs seem to compete with petty thieves from Eastern European countries who specialize in thefts by trickery. Seem, because is it ultimately about competition? Information from the police confirms that these teenagers are approached by these false “unaccompanied minors”. Are they acting under duress? These young women practice omerta, difficult to prove it.

These young adults who claim to be minors in order to escape legal proceedings, prison and their expulsion, are of course not managed by the Department of Hérault.

The fact remains that thefts by trickery are reappearing at a high rate. The carousels of the little thieves for the past few weeks have been the subject of surveillance by the agents of the City of Montpellier stationed at the urban supervision center -CSU-, which often pays off, like Friday May 19 at 1:45 p.m., when two Bosnians aged 13 and 18 gently relieved a 77-year-old Parisian of her blue card at a TaM 3M terminal, boulevard de the Republic.

500€ at an ATM

Very agile offenders. A police patrol dispatched to the area, guided by the CSU, succeeded in locating the two Bosnians, who had already withdrawn €500 from an ATM -DAB-, rue Maguelone. In police custody, the police discovered that they were not at their first attempt, but very well versed in these actions, since they are unfavorably known.

The minor was handed over to an emergency cell, the young major, released will have to appear later at a court hearing.

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