Flurry of Crimes Has Many Tourists Calling Rio Anything but Marvelous

RIO DE JANEIRO —  Editor’s Note: The Times Travel Section has received numerous letters from readers describing incidents of tourist crime in Rio de Janeiro. In response, The Times’ bureau chief in Rio, William R. Long, investigated the problem and filed this report .

This city has it all: spectacular natural setting, tropical beaches, big-city sophistication . . . and urban crime.

No one should expect perfection in a Third World metropolis of more than 10 million people. Yet some foreign visitors have been surprised to find that the “Marvelous City,” as Rio calls itself, has its share of pickpockets and robbers.

“It’s a big city,” said David Kurakane, press spokesman for the U.S. Consulate in Rio. “It’s not a paradise. You must be alert.”

Few big cities have the attractions of Rio. Forested mountains and granite crags tower over sandy seashores and glittering rows of high-rise buildings. The climate is so benign that bikinis are in season most of the year. Brazilian music, dancing, food and drink add special flavor.

Rio’s residents, called cariocas , are generally easygoing and friendly. But thieves, muggers and armed robbers are adding a dark stain to Rio’s reputation for sunshine, scenery and fun.

Unwary tourists on southern Rio’s famous beach strips--Copacabana, Ipanema, Leblon and Sao Conrado--can lose jewelry, cameras, watches, wallets and purses in an instant of confusion or carelessness.

Groups of teen-age and younger boys called pivetes jostle tourists on the sidewalks and sprint off with valuables before their victims can react. Beach thieves steal from sleeping sunbathers or distracted bikini-watchers.

Many Minors Involved

Luis Tadeu de Toledo, a spokesman for the Rio Tourist Hotel Assn., said a study showed that 70% to 80% of crime against tourists along the southern beaches is committed by minors.

In an effort to address the problem, De Toledo said, the hotel association and other groups have begun working with government agencies that have responsibility for dealing with homeless and delinquent children.

The main problem, he said, is that the agencies do not have enough resources to care for the large number of neglected minors on the streets.

The other day, the newspaper O Globo ran two strips of color photographs on its front page showing foreign tourists being robbed by groups of pivetes on Copacabana’s beachfront Avenida Atlantica.

In one of the strips, a French woman ended up voluntarily giving the young thieves her necklace, then embracing them. (Note: The other strip is shown on this page.)

“I feel sorry for them,” O Globo quoted the woman as saying.

Annie Davee, press spokeswoman for the French Consulate in Rio, said the consulate registered 95 complaints from French citizens robbed in Rio last year and 41 in the first four months of this year.

Davee said tourists generally file written complaints with the consulate only if they lose passports or other documents.

“Robberies of other objects were much more numerous,” she said.

Kurakane, meanwhile, was unable to obtain any record of robbery complaints made to the U.S. Consulate, but he said the rate of such complaints is lower in Rio than in some big European cities.

Don’t Wear Jewelry

Even so, Davee and others advise tourists not to wear jewelry or carry cameras on the street or beach, to leave valuables in hotel safes, to stay in groups and to employ a Brazilian guide.

“When a thief sees a tourist with a Brazilian, he doesn’t know if it is a tourist or a friend, so he thinks twice,” Anee said.

Davee said most tourists are robbed on the beaches or in transportation vehicles, including the picturesque tramway in Rio’s Santa Teresa neighborhood, and public buses.

Another article in O Globo said 20 to 25 holdups occur every day on buses in greater Rio, but that most armed robberies are on routes through sections of the city not frequented by tourists.

In a few cases, however, tourist buses have been held up by armed robbers. Nicholas and Ada Mae Hardeman of Garden Grove were with a group of 26 Americans touring South America that was held up on a Rio bus March 5.

Robbed on Tour Bus

In a telephone interview from California, Hardeman said the bus was waiting for the group, which arrived in Rio at about 9:30 p.m. As the group left the airport their bus driver gave a ride to a uniformed man who identified himself as the driver of a bus that had broken down.

“When the man asked to stop, four guys surged on board the bus and robbed us,” said Ada Mae Hardeman, 66. She said the men were armed with pistols and some type of automatic weapon.

“They had an open satchel and they came around and told people to put money in it,” she said. “They also took some jewelry.

“At the end they started to fight among themselves because I think they realized time was running out, and the last thing they took was the hand luggage.”

During the robbery the bus kept moving. “The local tour guide was made to lie down in the aisle between the seats,” Hardeman said. “He kept pleading, ‘Please give them whatever they want. Do whatever they ask. They are very violent people.’ ”

Women Were Crying

The robbery lasted 10 to 15 minutes, “but it seemed an eternity, of course,” she said. “There were a lot of women who were terribly upset, crying and so on.”

After the bandits got off the bus, she said: “We had to go to three police stations before they would accept the report.”

The total value of stolen money and goods was estimated at $50,000. The Hardemans lost about $270 in cash, a camera, a pair of binoculars and a book on South American birds.

Later, staying at an ocean-front hotel, the California couple talked to several people who said they had been robbed on the beach or the street.

“One man was robbed twice,” she said, “and another businessman who had $4,000 in cash went out and was robbed.”

Hardeman said Rio was beautiful, especially when viewed from the top of famous Corcovado and Sugarloaf mountains.

Won’t Go There Again

“There are a lot of interesting things to do,” she said. “The natural locale is spectacular. But I wouldn’t go to Rio again. It’s too uncomfortable. The experience of looking at the business end of a gun gives you a whole different perspective.”

The newspaper Jornal do Brasil reported another holdup of a tourist bus in January and one last year.

Riotur, the municipal tourist authority, said that drivers of tourist buses have been given new and detailed instructions on procedures to follow for avoiding holdups. Trajano Ribeiro, president of Riotur, said the buses are now prohibited from stopping between the airport and their destinations.

Ribeiro said the crime in Rio’s tourist areas is normal for a big city. “It is nothing alarming or different from any other big tourist center in the world, such as New York, London, Paris, Madrid.”

Hotels Take Precautions

But in an unusual string of crimes, armed gangs in Rio have invaded hotels five times in the last two years, robbing guests or cleaning out safety deposit boxes. Police said the same gang appeared to be responsible for the two latest hotel holdups, both in January.

Some major hotels take elaborate security measures to protect their guests. Philippe Faidy, manager of the Caesar Park Hotel on Ipanema Beach, said the hotel uses a system with closed-circuit television and 25 security guards.

Some guards in plain clothes patrol the beach in front of the hotel and others, using binoculars and walkie-talkies, scan the area from the hotel roof.

Faidy said robbers and thieves know that the hotel is well protected and stay away. But he said crime in other areas that are poorly policed gives Rio a bad reputation.

He blamed public authorities for the inefficiency of the police. “They are authorities that don’t do anything,” he said. “That is the only problem.”

Cid Pacheco, president of the Rio state tourist authority, said state police and other agencies are preparing to make Copacabana Beach a “sanitized area,” with intensive policing and sanitation.

Nearly half of Rio’s hotels are in Copacabana, and much of the crime against tourists has been concentrated there.

Many Homicides

But Pacheco emphasized that crime affected only a tiny fraction of the 1.2 million tourists who came to Rio last year. “The number of tourists with a crime problem was less than 1%,” he said.

The state of Rio has a high homicide rate--more than 500 persons were killed in April--but Pacheco and others observed that most killings are in low-income areas on the north and west sides of the city, far from the southern beaches.

He complained that publicity about crime in Rio is often exaggerated, but he insisted that it has not reduced the flow of foreign tourists.

According to statistics kept by the state tourist authority, he said, the number of American tourists coming to Rio grew from 136,000 in 1986 to 165,000 in 1987.

But Arthur Berman, a tour wholesaler in New York City, said by telephone that the number of tourists he books to Rio has fallen off dramatically because of the crime reports.

“I used to do 50,000 a year,” he said. “If I do 5,000 this year, I’ll be very happy. It’s only because of the negative publicity. It’s been completely blown out of proportion. Tourism from the United States is dying because of all this negative, negative, negative.”