Phone snatches: an update

Here’s the latest on mobile phone theft in your area.

Mobile phone theft is still occurring in our local area, especially in and around Upper Street, King's Cross, Angel Station and Highbury & Islington train/tube station. Please be aware of your surroundings when walking to and from work or just walking to the shops.

Thieves rely on the fact that many commuters will check their phones for messages the minute they leave a train/tube station.
 

We’ve put hundreds more officers on the frontline of community crime-fighting teams, upping visible patrols in the right ‘hot spots’ so we can deter and catch criminals. These officers are working hard to bear down on mobile phone crime in London, arresting phone thieves on the street, shutting down vendors trading stolen devices and dismantling international criminal gangs.

We have now almost halved phone theft in Westminster, where it was most concentrated, following an intensive crackdown which has seen hundreds of arrests and thousands of phones recovered. After campaigning by the Met, Apple has also made a global change to its security system that better ensures stolen phones cannot be reused or resold – disrupting a highly organised international business model worth millions.

But we know there is more to do. That’s why we’re stepping up our use of technology, including drones and facial recognition, increasing our operations and working with phone companies to make it less appealing for criminals to commit these crimes in the first place.

You can report an incident of theft online at https://www.met.police.uk.