Artem Liholitov said he enjoyed his time in London but was surprised at how many times he was told to watch his stuff by adverts and was stunned when he researched the crime rates
A German tourist who visited London and was shocked by its crime rates has created a new pickpocket-tracking app in an effort to help catch thieves. Artem Liholitov, 33, was visiting London from Hamburg in February when he noticed there were ads everywhere warning people of the dangers of daily life.
Despite never feeling unsafe during his visit, the “see it, say it, sorted” ad slogan stuck in his head, and upon his return he decided to research the capital’s crime rates. He said: “I had a very great experience in England and London – I was pretty positively impressed, especially with the food.
“We pretty much went to all the touristic hotspots in London, and I never felt unsafe, it was pretty friendly.
“But what stuck with me when we came back to Germany was the aggressive ad you hear everywhere in England. It says ‘see it, say it, sorted’, it’s everywhere.
“When I came back I was like ‘why are they advertising this so aggressively?’ I started to research the crime statistics in London – are things that bad?”
In his research, Artem, who works in marketing, came across videos showing regular-looking pickpockets in the nation’s capital – and he decided he wanted to help do something about it. He said: “I was surprised that those pickpockets look like regular folks.
“Apparently there are plenty of those people in London. I thought ‘what if you saw a pickpocket or scam activities and you could just report them?'”
His website, pickpockets.live, allows users to report sightings of suspicious activity as they happen in order to warn others. Any photos uploaded to the site are published with faces blurred, in order to protect the privacy of people being photographed.
He hopes the website will eventually become popular enough that it could help police monitor pickpocketing hotspots. Artem said: “You don’t have to download anything, you don’t even have to create an account, you don’t have to register.
“I wanted it to be as simple as possible for everybody to use. If you spot a pickpocket, you can just pull out your phone and create a report.
“It’s anonymous and it stays up for 24 hours. You just type in what you saw, choose the city and location, and you can also upload an image.
“This is pretty much like: see it, post it, prevent it – it’s not like see it, say it, sorted.”
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