What are the police doing to stop phone robbers? Metro went on patrol to find out | British news

A woman walked up to a group of four police officers patrolling Oxford Street, making her the third person to have her phone taken in central London that day.

The same song sounds in the capital: if your phone hasn’t been taken away yet, you know someone who has.

“The worst thing I’ve seen is that about 40 phones were stolen in four hours,” said officer Tibor Kovacs.

Only a handful were only recovered after he injured his arm trying to grab a thief who zoomed past him.

But in a race between the two legs of an officer and an e-bike that has been tampered with to reach a speed of 120 km/h, there is no problem who will win.

Last year, more than 50,000 phones were seized in London. Reports suggest they are popping up all over Britain, with many now appearing in China.

As for the woman, all the officers could do was encourage her to file an online report and cancel all her online banking.

Not entirely satisfied, the woman said: ‘It happened right in the restaurant where I work, there are cameras everywhere, can I pass that on?’

The officers replied “of course,” but will she, or anyone else, ever get his phone back? This is what happened when Metro was invited to join the newly formed Town Center Team.

How can phones be stolen so easily?

The number of stolen phones is only rising in the capital, with a 73% increase on 2019, according to the Mayor of London.

The number of reports increases over the summer as the city becomes flooded with tourists holding up their phones, staring at Google Maps and looking up reviews for the best places to eat.

Chief Inspector Al Connelly told Metro: ‘Phone thieves are taking as many devices as they can while reaching ridiculous speeds on illegal e-bikes.’

He said the Met believes the robbers are a mixture of individual opportunists, smaller gangs and larger criminal organisations.

But identifying them further is hard work as they are covered from head to toe in an attempt to disguise themselves, giving would-be criminals a sense of invisibility.

What can the police do to get the phones back?

There are a number of tools police can use to catch phone robbers other than chasing them on foot.

Helicopters have been deployed to locate the thief as he rampages through central London.

“If we get it done quickly, we can cover and track the city with relative ease,” Al said.

But it’s not often they get the green light to send one, because helicopters are reserved for more pressing emergencies, leaving officers on the ground to their own devices.

Chasing them is a risky endeavor as the risk of knocking over pedestrians is high as the robbers can easily weave through sidewalks and alleys.

Tibor said he injured his upper arm trying to stop one, and had to take time off work to recover.

What if victims can track their phones themselves?

Victims have repeatedly said how frustrating it is to see their phone traveling around London, while police say there is nothing they can do to retrieve it.

Many victims can track the phone themselves using features like Find My iPhone.

Rutesh Durve, 37, told Metro: ‘After my phone was stolen from my hands, my wife sat watching it at home while I wondered that Regents Street didn’t know what to do.

‘She could see it was near the SE14 area for a few hours before it pinged in Tottenham and stayed there for a few days before turning up in China.

But patterns are starting to form and researchers hope they will have enough evidence soon.

Chief Inspector Connelly said: “We are building an intelligence picture that can be presented to the courts.

‘We still want victims to continue giving us the location of their phones via tracking apps, so please help us even more.’

What happens after they are taken?

But because many phones are not returned, it is still not entirely clear what exactly happens to them and why many end up in China.

Victims report receiving messages through their iCloud account informing them that their phone has “been found” and that they need to “send their passcode.”

If they don’t after a few days, the messages can become combative.

Mr Durve said: ‘After a few days, my wife started receiving a few messages claiming to be from Find My iPhone, saying that my device had been found and that she needed to send the passcode.

‘It looked like an advanced level of crime because they sent a link to a web page that said my location would be displayed.

‘We had already noticed, messages were coming in where the criminals threatened to sell my phone if I didn’t mark it as lost or stolen.’

“We know it’s a very personal form of theft because we keep our lives in our phones with photos and messages,” Al said.

‘We are doing our best to find them. We are well aware that there is a large second-hand market for them in China, and it is up to other teams to try to prevent them from being taken out of the country.”