Ease of ripoffs of tourists described at seminar

Every day in Las Vegas, thieves target tourists by stealing wallets, snatching purses and walking away with briefcases and luggage. It can happen at the airport, a convention, a hotel or on the Strip.

That's what Detective Lothel Crawford Jr. with the New York City Police Department told about 150 police and security officers at a seminar Monday at the Palace Station hotel-casino.

"It can happen anywhere, anytime to anyone," said Crawford, who described himself as the top expert in the country on distraction crimes. "Does it happen in Las Vegas? Absolutely. All the time."

The tourism safety and security seminar, sponsored by the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority, Metro Police and the Las Vegas Security Chiefs Association, continues through Wednesday. About 40 percent of the attendees are from out of town. The majority of them are private security officers, according to Sgt. Shane Robb with Metro's tourist safety unit.

Crawford showed surveillance videotape of tourists being ripped off by individuals and by teams of thieves who surround the victims and distract them while someone else steals their money from their pants and jacket pockets, purses and wallets.

"They team up to steal wallets," Crawford said. "They'll take $800, just like that."

Easy targets for the thieves are travelers who put down their briefcases or purses and wait for them to pass through the airport X-ray security machines, he said.

"They never come out," Crawford said. "A thief distracts the security officers and someone else waits for them and walks away with your briefcase or purse. The security people don't see it."

Robb said police have been working with local hotels to decrease crimes against tourists. Surveillance cameras in hotels and casinos is unique to Las Vegas and give police an added advantage in catching the thieves, he said. He added that Las Vegas has the largest private police force in the world because of the number of security guards at hotel-casinos.

"The surveillance and the training of security (at hotels) is the key to our success in solving crimes," Robb said. "The 'eye in the sky' (surveillance camera) is our best friend. If I have a guy on videotape six times and we catch him the seventh time, we've just cleared seven crimes."

Tourists in Las Vegas have also been the targets of violent crimes that police say were motivated by theft.

Last year, the body of 67-year-old Mildred Prunier, a tourist, was found in a desert area near Nellis Air Force Base. A suspect was later arrested and charged with murder. Police said the motive was robbery.

Also last year, Ernest Salvoti, 61, of Monaca, Pa., was shot to death near the Strip as he and a group walked to their hotel room. The gunman, who was never apprehended by police, grabbed a fannypack from one of the women in the group and fled.

In 1996, a panhandler murdered a Scottish tourist standing at a bus stop on the Strip near Spring Mountain Road. The motive was also robbery, police said.

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