{"id":351039,"date":"2025-08-17T06:37:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-17T06:37:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/351039\/"},"modified":"2025-08-17T06:37:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-17T06:37:11","slug":"armed-with-tiktok-viral-pickpocket-buster-hunts-londons-thieves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/351039\/","title":{"rendered":"Armed with TikTok, viral pickpocket-buster hunts London\u2019s thieves"},"content":{"rendered":"<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">On a recent weekday, Diego Galdino was on the hunt for pickpockets in central London, patrolling tourist hotspots for familiar suspects and telltale signs of those about to commit theft.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">Galdino, however, is not a policeman.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">The Brazilian food app delivery rider has become a popular, social media-fuelled vigilante targeting pickpocketing in the British capital.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">He started filming \u2013 and then trying to disrupt \u2013 thieves in action after witnessing several incidents.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">And his videos on Instagram, TikTok and other platforms under the handle \u201cpickpocketlondon\u201d have proved a hit.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">One posted in late July on TikTok amassed nearly 27 million views \u2013 another on Instagram showing a suspect spitting at him garnered more than 12 million.<\/p>\n<p datatype=\"p\" data-qa=\"Component-Component\" class=\"e8zc9q40 css-1c6uqr6 ec74h0k1\">\u201cI didn\u2019t know nothing about TikTok, I didn\u2019t know nothing about uploading a video,\u201d Galdino said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"On a recent weekday, Diego Galdino was on the hunt for pickpockets in central London, patrolling tourist hotspots&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":351040,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7757],"tags":[2106,748,2633,124085,393,4884,459,124086,124088,257,135,1411,124087,449,16,15,22961,3069,599],"class_list":{"0":"post-351039","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-london","8":"tag-brazil","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-buckingham-palace","11":"tag-diego-galdino","12":"tag-england","13":"tag-great-britain","14":"tag-instagram","15":"tag-jennifer-fleetwood","16":"tag-labour-mayor-sadiq-khan","17":"tag-london","18":"tag-metropolitan-police","19":"tag-paris","20":"tag-pickpocketlondon","21":"tag-tiktok","22":"tag-uk","23":"tag-united-kingdom","24":"tag-venice","25":"tag-westminster","26":"tag-whatsapp"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115042729545287590","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351039","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=351039"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/351039\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/351040"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=351039"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=351039"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=351039"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}