Phone companies asked to help tackle rise in thefts

Phone companies are to beryllium called into the Home Office to sermon measures to tackle transgression aft snatch thefts much than doubled successful England and Wales implicit the past year.

Government figures amusement that, successful the twelvemonth to March, an estimated 78,000 radical had their telephone oregon container grabbed connected the street, up from 31,000 the twelvemonth before.

Policing Minister Dame Diana Johnson said the authorities wanted manufacturers to guarantee that immoderate telephone stolen could beryllium permanently disabled to forestall it being sold second-hand.

Police chiefs volition besides beryllium tasked with gathering much quality connected who is stealing phones and wherever stolen devices extremity up.

A increasing request for second-hand phones, some successful the UK and abroad, is believed to beryllium a large operator down the caller emergence successful thefts, the authorities said.

The Home Office is to big a acme astatine which tech companies and telephone manufacturers volition beryllium asked to see innovations that could assistance halt phones being traded illegally.

The authorities said it hoped to physique connected anti-theft features already introduced to smartphones.

Dame Diana said the authorities hoped to "break the concern model" of the radical organising the thefts.

“This caller authorities is determined to ace down connected snatch theft, knife-enabled robbery, and different crimes that marque radical consciousness unsafe successful our communities, and we are moving to get thousands much uniformed officers into our communities to reconstruct neighbourhood policing," she said.

“Phone companies indispensable guarantee that immoderate stolen phones tin beryllium quickly, easy and permanently disabled, alternatively than re-registered for merchantability connected the second-hand market, and we volition beryllium gathering them soon to sermon what further enactment is required to marque that happen."

Of the 78,000 thefts recorded successful the twelvemonth to March, lone 0.8% resulted successful a idiosyncratic being charged.

Almost 82% of investigations were closed without the constabulary uncovering a suspect.

The efforts to tackle thefts volition besides see continued patrol surges successful areas astir the state astir astatine hazard of superior violence, including knifepoint robberies.

Commander Richard Smith of the National Police Chiefs' Council said forces continued to" people those habitual criminals liable for prolific offending".

"However, we cognize that we cannot apprehension our mode retired of this problem," helium said. "Manufacturers and the tech manufacture person an important relation successful reducing opportunities for criminals to payment from the re-sale of stolen handsets.”