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"Un pequeño regalo a los turistas" (with VIDEO)
Neapolitan government to offer free plastic watches to visitors who do not want being robbed

One of the most popular sports of the youth gangs of Naples is robbing visitors. Cash, jewelry, fashion sunglasses, electronic gadgets (from cameras to mobile phones, notebooks, etc.), but for some reason wrist watches are on the top of their wish list. The thieves in Naples developed dozens of original techniques to steal watches from your wrist, both violent or unnoticed.

The phenomenon of wrist watch snatching has been spreading so widely & wildly that some time ago the local government (Giunta Regionale) decided to offer cheap plastic wrist watches to the brave and fearless tourists who want to visit Naples. The visitors may leave their expensive watches in their Hotels and borrow the cheap plastic ones so they can walk by the city with a lesser chance of being robbed or getting hurt. The plastic watches are not a gift, they have to be returned to the Hotel before leaving the city.

I've always wondered if this will ever happen in any other place on Earth besides Naples.

On a "funny" note, these plastic watches "were designed by artists" as the authorities explain. Actually the local government paid a lot of money for items that aren't mean for market or commerce. The "artists" who designed these watches are mostly unknown but well paid. While the "trendy" and "fashionable" nature of these watches is arguable, it's a fact that the money spent could have been used to fight seriously the crime that originated their need. In a city in such deprecable state, one could imagine 1,000 uses for public money instead of producing cheap wrist watches and pay top money for them.

Here's a video (with some excerpt in a very broken Spanish at 1:00) of local authorities representatives that proudly introduce the watches to the public: