Met seizes 1,000 stolen phones in a week in fight back against handset snatch epidemic

The Met Police has seized much than 1 1000 stolen phones from mobile telephone snatchers successful a week successful a crackdown.

The fightback against the telephone theft epidemic saw 230 radical arrested, and comes arsenic Home Secretary Yvette Cooper chairs a acme aboriginal connected Thursday connected smartphone theft.

The unit targeted those progressive successful stealing, handling and supplying stolen phones successful a week of "co-ordinated activity" crossed London successful a bid to disrupt the “£50 million-a-year commercialized successful stolen phones".

Hotspots see the West End and Westminster, with officers saying they had already accrued patrols and "plain-clothed operations" successful those areas.

During Thursday's acme with Ms Cooper, Met Deputy Commissioner Dame Lynne Owens volition rise improving information connected phones to forestall stolen devices from being easy resold, the unit said.

Officers besides privation to enactment with manufacture members to forestall stolen handsets from re-connecting to unreality services, and to marque a device's planetary mobile instrumentality individuality (IMEI) fig viewable connected its lockscreen.

Network providers tin usage the unsocial 15-digit IMEI to artifact the instrumentality if it is stolen.

Commander Owain Richards, starring the Met's effect to phone thefts, 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."

Phone-tracking information and quality is being utilized to hint radical utilizing stolen devices.

Last twelvemonth 4 members of a pack were sentenced to "a combined 18 years" aft handling much than 5,000 stolen phones, the unit said.

They were tracked down aft aggregate victims reported telephone theft successful the aforesaid location, it added.

Mr Richards said "we request assistance from partners and manufacture to bash more" and the unit is "calling connected tech companies to marque stolen phones unusable".

Kaya Comer-Schwartz, London's lawman politician for policing and crime, said "personal robbery" has fallen by 13% successful the superior compared to the aforesaid play past year.

She added: "But determination is much to do. As the transgression request for high-value mobile phones continues to turn globally, the Mayor and I are wide that companies indispensable spell further and faster to marque it harder for stolen phones to beryllium sold on, repurposed and reused illegally.

"We'll proceed to enactment with starring mobile telephone companies, the Home Secretary and Met leaders to find innovative solutions to extremity the scourge of mobile telephone crime."