Phone thefts: How are the Met Police tackling the crisis in London?
If you live or travel in London, it’s fairly likely that you, or someone you live, work or socialise with, will – at some point or other – have had their phone stolen.
Whether it’s slipped out of your pocket, or snatched from your hand, the experience has become commonplace – but remains stressful, frustrating, and in some cases, violent.
Now the Met Police and the Home Office have announced a crackdown on the issue.
Home secretary Yvette Cooper is set to lead a summit on smartphone theft, and the Met Police have confirmed officers have seized more than 1,000 stolen devices in one week.
What are the police doing?
The Met say the trade in stolen phones is worth some £50m a year, as thieves sell the devices on, often overseas.
Officers held a week-long operation which saw 230 people arrested and more than 1,000 handsets seized – including a teenager on an illegal e-bike with £1,000 cash and a knife.
The blitz saw those responsible for the theft, handling, and criminal supply or exportation of stolen phones clamped down on during a week of co-ordinated activity across London.
Increasing patrols and plain-clothes presence in hotspots, including Westminster and the West End – where almost 40 per cent of thefts happen – are among measures the police are pursuing, alongside use of phone tracking data and intelligence.
Commander Owain Richards, who is leading the crackdown, said: “By intensifying our efforts we’re catching more perpetrators and protecting people from having their phone stolen in the capital. But we need help from partners and industry to do more.
“We’re working with other agencies and the government to tackle the organised criminality driving this trade and calling on tech companies to make stolen phones unusable.”
What is the government doing?
On Thursday, Cooper led a summit with police and mobile phone companies to address rising rates of phone theft.
She wants to push for tougher security measures on phones to prevent them from being resold – such as stopping them connecting to iCloud and making IMEI numbers accessible.
The home secretary told LBC Radio it was “totally unacceptable” for people to feel unsafe on the streets and that she was looking at stronger powers for police to tackle the phone thefts.
“It’s about hot spot policing and targeting and being ready to take swift action,” she said.
“It’s about speeding up warrants. That’s one of the things we will be discussing at the summit today, is what more powers the [police] might need, what more action might be taken, because we’ve got to make sure this really damaging organised crime can be tackled.”
While Kaya Comer-Schwartz, London’s deputy mayor for policing and crime, said personal robbery was now down 13 per cent in London compared to last year.
But she stressed “there is more to do” and vowed she and Mayor Sadiq Khan would continue to call on firms to “make it harder for stolen phones to be sold on and re-used illegally”, as well as seeking “innovative solutions to end the scourge of mobile phone crime.”
Some tech firms have stressed the need for better collaboration across government and the private sector. Kevin Gillan, managing director of Squaretrade, said manufacturers, telecommunications firms and insurers all “needed to come together to create better protection mechanisms”.
His firm’s research found that while 61 per cent of Londoners are now vigilant about phone theft, just one in five Brits have phone insurance.
What can you do to protect yourself?
The Met Police advise anyone with a smartphone to protect themselves against fraud by:
- Ensuring they have a strong password
- Installing two-factor authentication
- Turning off message previews so thieves cannot see any messages about reset or log-in codes when phones are locked
- Writing down and safely storing their IMEI number [a unique 15-digit code to block the device if stolen, which phone companies can also provide]