Local Mobile phone theft Message

Local Mobile phone theft Message

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

Officers from Whitechapel Safer Neighbourhood Team, working alongside the Whitechapel Town Centre Team and Roads and Transport Policing Command officers, recently carried out a targeted operation along Whitechapel Road focusing on the unlawful use of e-bikes and e-scooters.

The operation was launched in response to numerous reports from residents, businesses and visitors regarding anti-social behaviour involving these vehicles, as well as concerns that they are being used to facilitate offences including mobile phone thefts.

During the operation, officers stopped and inspected a large number of e-bikes and e-scooters. A significant quantity of vehicles were seized after being found to be illegally modified or capable of speeds beyond those permitted by law.
The activity also resulted in a number of arrests for various offences, and several individuals will be dealt with for traffic-related offences.

The Metropolitan Police remains committed to addressing community concerns and tackling criminality associated with the misuse of e-bikes and e-scooters. We will continue to carry out enforcement activity across Whitechapel to improve safety for everyone who lives, works and visits the area.
We would like to thank the public for their continued support and encourage anyone with information about crime or anti-social behaviour to report it to police.

We’ve put hundreds more officers on the frontlines 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, 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.