Met Police blitz to fight phone-snatching 'scourge'

A clampdown connected the "industrial-scale" transgression of mobile phone-snatching crossed London has resulted successful 230 radical being arrested by the Metropolitan Police successful the past week.

In its conflict against the "scourge of mobile telephone crime", the unit said it had besides seized much than 1,000 handsets.

The Met has deployed plain-clothed officers successful "hotspot" areas, including the West End and Westminster, and is besides utilizing tracking exertion to retrieve phones and drawback criminals.

It said its enactment had been "ramped up" to woody with the £50m-a-year commercialized successful stolen phones crossed the capital, with those liable for thefts, handling, and onward transgression proviso each being targeted.

It comes arsenic Home Secretary Yvette Cooper chairs a acme aboriginal connected Thursday connected smartphone theft.

The Met said that the location caput and Met Deputy Commissioner Dame Lynne Owens would sermon the contented of improving information connected phones to forestall stolen devices from being easy resold.

A caller victim, Richard, told the BBC that the theft of his telephone had near him feeling "uncomfortably nervous".

Richard said helium was walking on Highbury Fields successful northbound London erstwhile idiosyncratic dressed "entirely successful black" who was riding an e-bike snatched his telephone from his hand.

He said: "It's frustrating due to the fact that that's precisely wherever this benignant of happening typically happens. I'm ever telling radical to beryllium careful, but for 1 infinitesimal I forgot and my telephone went disconnected into the distance."

He said helium was initially angry, but his thoughts soon turned to worries astir his banking details being obtained by the thief - though this did not happen.

Richard said helium was "surprised" by the constabulary effect to his telephone being stolen.

He explained however officers visited him astatine home, and by utilizing a tracker they could spot his instrumentality had been taken to a telephone repair shop, wherever Richard said the constabulary explained determination had been erstwhile transgression activity.

Despite this, the telephone could not beryllium recovered.

The mode constabulary responsed to this transgression is markedly antithetic from what different Londoners accidental they person experienced, adjacent recently.

In December, a decorator from Tottenham told the BBC however she had felt unsupported by constabulary aft her telephone was stolen, and ended up utilizing tracking exertion to hint it herself.

Izzy Du located the telephone hidden successful a hedge, on with six different handsets.

The Met's Cdr Owain Richards said: "We are seeing telephone thefts connected an concern scale, fuelled by criminals making millions by being capable to easy merchantability connected stolen devices either present oregon abroad.

"By intensifying our efforts we're catching much perpetrators and protecting radical from having their telephone stolen successful the capital."

He added that determination were calls for different agencies and the authorities to bash more, and for tech companies to marque stolen phones unusable.

The unit wants the telephone manufacture to forestall stolen handsets from being reconnected to unreality services.

The Met said it had utilized tracking technology, and victims reporting phone-thefts, to precocious prosecute 4 members of a pack who were aboriginal sentenced to a combined 18 years successful prison.

The pack had been caught handling much than 5,000 stolen phones.

Advice from police:

• Use the nationalist mobile telephone registry truthful recovered handsets tin beryllium restored, via the Police National Mobile Property Register (NMPR)
• Set up a beardown password and two-factor authentication
• Turn disconnected connection previews truthful thieves cannot spot immoderate messages
• Write down and safely store the phone's IMEI number