I’m considering leaving London – phone snatchers have made it terrifying

This weekend someone tried to steal my phone out of my hands. I was on my way to the hospital to visit a family member and was looking at Google Maps when it happened, in the middle of the day in central London.

I felt a sudden presence beside me. Instinctively, my whole body tensed and fortunately, so did my grip on my phone. Within seconds, a cyclist appeared, a hand was extended to grab him, and they tried to grab him, but failed. By the time the police arrived to take a statement, they told me that the same cyclist had committed several other thefts in the city.

I’m getting so tired of it – to the point where if I didn’t have to be here for my family and work, I’d honestly consider leaving London. The same thing happened to my boyfriend last week, and it happened to me a few years ago when they actually managed to steal my phone.

Besides the shock, the biggest stress came from losing money and data. Although I work hard to back up my files, I lost precious pictures and conversations, including those with a friend of mine who had passed away.

It has had a long-lasting impact on how I feel when I walk down the street. I tense up when there is a cyclist nearby, especially if they are following me. My whole body tenses up and I crane my neck to see who it is. Of course, usually it is a perfectly normal person in fluorescent glasses going about their day. But something has clearly entered my psyche now, causing my body to remember the trauma and muscle memory to act on its own.

If it’s not a cyclist, it’s someone who comes up to you and asks you random questions while holding a newspaper; they put the newspaper over your phone and when you’re not looking, they pick it up again, along with your device, without you noticing. Someone tried this on me in Hyde Park years ago, and sadly it happened to my mum a few months ago. Replacing our devices has cost us hundreds and hundreds of pounds – and a criminal gang has profited from it instead.

Frustratingly, phone theft has been all but decriminalised in London. Last year, it was reported that a phone was stolen every six minutes in the city. If this year feels particularly bad, the data backs it up; there was a 33 per cent increase in reported mobile phone thefts from the person in the year to January 2024, with over a third of these offences taking place in Westminster.

This month, Sadiq Khan’s office revealed that almost half of reported phone thefts in London in recent years have not been investigated further. This ‘screening out’ occurs because police decide that the lines of enquiry are not viable to identify a suspect or follow up on leads.

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I wonder if they would be more feasible if the police had more powers to pursue cyclists and mopeds. I have heard from sources that Metropolitan Police officers are advised against pursuing because of the risk of collisions.

Officers who knock down fleeing suspects in what is often called “tactical contact” can find themselves in misconduct hearings. Police also can’t rely on tracking data, such as Find My Phone.

The Met has said that while the data can help investigations, tracking cannot be fully effective due to built-up areas and inaccuracy. Then there is the issue of resources, with police numbers shrinking. Without the power or officers to actually catch criminals, it is not surprising that so many investigations go nowhere.

Countries also differ in how easily devices can be unlocked or dismantled. In the UK, all phones sold must be unlocked. But what is now happening to London phones instead is that they are being taken abroad by criminal gangs to places like Shenzhen, China, where The Times reported there is a lucrative second-hand market where iPhones are manufactured. Unlocked phones are resold; locked phones are dismantled and sold for parts. Stolen devices do not stay in the UK for long for this reason, further hampering police efforts to locate them.

I don’t think it’s just criminal gangs that are taking advantage of this, it’s tech companies too. Most of us who have our phones stolen end up buying a new one. I now pay my provider exorbitant amounts of money, not just for my phone bill, but for my phone insurance, terrified of the inevitable eventuality that someone will steal my phone again.

At the very least, companies like Apple should be at the forefront of lobbying countries like China to change their laws around the surveillance and sale of locked devices, and to introduce additional technical features that could render more phones useless once stolen. In the meantime, police in the capital and elsewhere should be given far greater powers to track down and investigate phone thieves.

Because we can’t rely on police to curb this crime, many have turned to buying devices or adopting new behaviors to protect themselves, such as wearing their phones on a wristband and only looking at them when they’re in an enclosed space. I remember women’s safety kits going viral after Sarah Everard’s murder; for some of us they provide short-term comfort, but in the long run they’re an indictment of a police force that has failed to protect us.

I’ll never get my data back for my lost phone, or my money, and the time I had to report a crime for a nearly lost phone when I should have gone straight to the hospital to be with my family. I never thought I’d have to get used to being a victim of crime where I live – but decriminalized phone crime means I’m constantly thinking about my own safety, rather than what to do in case another cyclist comes up behind me.

Sophia Smith Galer is a multi-award-winning reporter, author and content creator based in London