Meet the man taking on Rome’s violent railway pickpockets

Riding the Rome underground, Simone Cicalone starts yelling when he spots a South American man in shorts and sunglasses seated among the tourists.
“Pickpocket!” he cries, prompting the man to leap off the train at Colosseum station and head for the street with Cicalone in hot pursuit.
“Watch out — he’s a pickpocket and a nasty one!” Cicalone yelled outside the arena, startling crowds of visitors as the man kept walking, clearly accustomed to being chased by the vigilante.
“A month ago this man said he would get 15 of his accomplices and knife me, but I’m still here,” says Cicalone, 50, as his prey sped off towards the Roman Forum.
Every moment of the incident is videoed by one of Cicalone’s team of four, ready to be uploaded to YouTube where his 750,000 followers eagerly await his clashes with Rome’s pickpockets — up to 200 by his reckoning and mostly Peruvian and Roma — who work the underground.
There is plenty to film. As temperatures soared this summer the increasingly riotous south Americans have used pepper spray on crowded carriages when cornered by angry tourists, fought running battles on platforms with rival groups of thieves and fled down tunnels when nabbed by security guards, halting trains.
They also have to deal with Cicalone, a burly former boxing instructor who regularly stops on platforms for selfies with fans and chats to grateful station staff when not spotting and filming pickpockets, including one who recently threatened him with a broken beer bottle.
Looking for more action this week, Cicalone heads back down to the platform at Colosseum station, receiving tips on sightings of thieves from security guards and pointing out the look-outs who warn the pickpockets of his arrival. “That guy we identified was with others who will now be putting out word we are here,” he says.
The viral success of Cicalone’s videos — he says he grosses 100,000 euros a year from his posts — has triggered promises of more police on the platforms. However, not everyone is a fan, starting with the Italian union CGIL which accused him of “normalising” racism for profit since his targets are invariably foreigners or gangs of young Gypsy girls.
The vigilante has previously teamed up in Rome with Monica Poli, a member of the anti-migrant League party who became famous after yelling “attention pickpocket” at Gypsies in Venice.
He says that he avoids politics, and while he concedes that racists might like his videos, he adds: “They think that way anyway so one video won’t change their views. The important thing is we try to show people they should be careful on the underground.”
To deflect accusations of racism he points to a member of his team, Edgar, a Rome-based Peruvian entrepreneur who looks ready for action in leather fingerless gloves.
“I signed up because the good reputation of the Peruvian community in Rome was suffering due to these pickpockets — we are being turned down for jobs,” says Edgar, 30, who adds that photos of known Peruvian thieves are being circulated in the Peruvian community.
Another recruit is Bamba Yacouba, 26, a migrant from the Ivory Coast who works as a cook in Rome when not posting videos for his 207,000 TikTok followers. “Both me and my sister, we have had phones stolen on the trains — it wasn’t like this when I arrived in Rome ten years ago,” he says.
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As the team move on to Rome’s Termini station Yacouba is stopped more often that Cicalone by fans seeking a selfie, giving the criminal hunt the surreal feel of a celebrity outing.
The vigilantes and their fans are not the only ones taking pictures and videos. When a gang of South Americans surrounded Cicalone and his crew during one Metro foray and punched Evelina, his video maker, breaking her camera, the assailants had their phones out.
“They were all filming and when Simone pushed one of them, a woman, it is probable they wanted to use the video to blackmail him, but he admitted it in a post and said he made a mistake,” Evelina says.
The team do not always correctly identify pickpockets. A suspicious character they briefly trail turns out to be a middle-aged Vietnamese tourist. However, Cicalone claims he will never yell at an innocent bystander by mistake.
“Usually I recognise the pickpockets, but if I don’t I approach and politely ask, ‘How come you have been hanging round this station for hours?’ ”
That is his opening line with two burly men loitering at Termini station. “Eastern Europeans, bag snatchers, more aggressive than the Peruvians and Gypsies,” he later comments, claiming that about 15-20 new arrivals from Eastern Europe are now working the underground.
As he racks up thousands of views, Cicalone says he will not be deterred by his new foes. Pointing to passengers waiting for a train, he says he is doing it for them: “Crime on the underground hits the weakest, people who don’t have a car — these pickpockets are stealing from the poor.”