While overall crime is falling, police are becoming less successful in solving the two offenses that affect foreign visitors most. Meanwhile, pickpocketing in the capital is rising steadily, according to Interior Ministry statistics.

"Pickpocketing ranks among the most frequent of criminal activities and it only makes sense that the public is concerned over this," says Prague Mayor Pavel Bém, who has launched an awareness campaign warning riders of public transit to "have your eyes everywhere."

With 20 people a day reporting that a thief has plucked a wallet or valuables, City Hall has plastered the metro and trams with posters targeted at high tourist season thefts, written in Czech and English and showing huge eyes peeking out of handbags and purses.

City Hall spokesman Jiří Wolf says, "Life in a modern city brings with it a number of unpleasant factors and City Hall does not want to pretend that it does not see this." But heightened awareness on its own will not stop determined thieves who haunt the capital's trams, metros, shops and other areas that attract crowds.

Australian tourist Bill Thompson and his wife were targeted twice at Můstek metro station during a four-day trip to Prague in May, losing a wallet, cash and credit cards. "We had been warned about pickpockets but the second time was more like a mugging, as about five men crowded around us in plain view of many other travelers," Thompson says in an e-mail to The Prague Post. "They separated my wife from me and I saw one guy put his hand into her handbag. When I warned her, she checked her bag and found that her wallet was gone."

Thompson says that confronting the thief didn't help. "I don't speak Czech and he didn't offer to speak English. None of the other travelers on the train said anything."

Of the 351,600 crimes reported countrywide last year, 15,800 were pickpocketing offenses. More than 7,300 of these were committed in Prague, up from 6,087 in 2000. At the same time, police have solved fewer pickpocket crimes: The clearance rate of 7.4 percent in Prague five years ago fell to just 2.7 percent in 2004.

In comparison, the Metropolitan Police in London say they solved 1.35 percent of pickpocketing offenses in the 12 months ending March 2005. But that doesn't necessarily mean British police are half as effective as Prague's, they say, pointing out that definitions of crime and the way it's recorded differ from country to country.

Police resigned

Ladislav Bernášek, a spokesman for Prague's municipal police, says that stamping out pickpocketing is notoriously difficult. Unless a thief is caught red-handed, it's hard to prove he has committed a crime based only on a victim's description of the offender. A thief may also hold on to valuables he has stolen for only a moment.

"Pickpockets often operate in groups and a stolen wallet goes from person to person in a matter of seconds," Bernášek says. He adds that the law prevents police from sending undercover officers to carry out sting operations on pickpockets on tram number 22, to Old Town, train stations and other locations favored by thieves.

Meanwhile, some thieves work in gangs that often use children who cannot be prosecuted if they are under the age of criminal responsibility, which is 15. In light of all this, Bernášek recommends prevention as the best solution, urging travelers to make sure they don't provide an easy target. "Some people, and not just foreigners, practically offer their property to the thieves by keeping valuables in visible places, in the back pockets of their trousers, walking around with open bags and handbags."

In the first five months of this year, Prague pickpockets stole valuables worth 29 million Kč ($1.16 million), according to the Interior Ministry. In the same period, the value of property stolen from cars in the capital was 309 million Kč.

While the number of thefts from cars has fallen in recent years, police have not had much more success in solving such crime than in their efforts to combat pickpocketing. They cleared up 6.4 percent of thefts from cars in Prague in 2003, falling to 4.3 percent in the first five months of 2005.

Bernášek says that most automobile break-ins are carried out late at night in quiet areas of the city. "The police of course pay special attention to such places but cannot be everywhere at all times."

Again, he put the onus of crimefighting on potential victims, describing growing numbers of "irresponsible car owners" who leave briefcases or valuables on the back seat. "Plus we have to bear in mind that breaking into a car is a question of just a few seconds."