A top detective has revealed that despite state-of-the-art tracking technology that allows people to see where thieves who have stolen their phones have taken them, police officers are often unable to recover the valuables.
The scourge of phone stealing in British cities has come to the fore in recent months, with countless videos showing criminals taking the devices from unsuspecting members of the public as they go about their daily lives.
Aside from the inconvenience and potential financial impact of losing their phone, the crime wave has left victims losing items of high sentimental value and having to buy new devices.
For many, the most frustrating aspect of these brazen thefts is the struggle to get their phones back before they are sold on the black market in Britain or even China.
With the growing popularity of tracking apps that allow people to narrow down their phone’s location to individual street corners, it has become easy to see where your device is once it is lifted by the lawless subsection of society.
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Despite having the technology to pinpoint the device’s location, police are often powerless to track them down, according to a top cop.
Inspector Dan Green, head of a team tackling thefts, including phone thefts, at the City of London Police, says the usefulness of apps like ‘Find My’ can only be limited.
Writing in The Sunday Times, he said: ‘We realize it is frustrating for victims who want us to turn up and break down the door because their phone is pinging an address. But it’s not that simple.’
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Insp. Green said some of these locations aren’t worth sending officers to because the phone will have been moved to a private address by the time they arrive, while others could be hours outside the force’s area.
He said manpower is also needed to go to these places, requiring at least four officers each time, because phone robbers are “often involved in other forms of serious organized crime.”
He added that they have occasionally found “more stolen property, drugs, large amounts of cash and weapons, including large zombie knives.”
Insp. Green also said that while tracking apps can provide location, they are sometimes not accurate enough to be truly useful.
He said: ‘The Find My app may show that there is an iPhone in a block of flats, but you don’t see anything on the vertical axis and the building could have ten floors. So we have to decide whether to knock on every apartment in the block.’
The investigator added that this doesn’t mean location software is never useful; he said it can be used in combination with other information, such as information that a known thief lives there, to form the basis of a search.
But if a suspect denies them entry, police sometimes have to get a court order to enter, another process that takes time and requires detailed information to convince the courts to grant access. Sometimes a location from the ‘Find My’ app isn’t enough to do this.
Insp. Green added that police officers can sometimes force entry into a property, but only to make an arrest and once they have reasonable grounds to believe the suspect is inside.
He said: ‘So we go to these addresses, but we just can’t do them all. All that said, we use agents as often as possible and get great results.”
Earlier this month, police released footage showing police taking down Sonny Stringer, one of London’s most prolific phone thieves, as he sped around the capital on an e-bike.
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The 28-year-old was rammed by officers and found with 24 mobile phones worth £20,000 – he stole them in just one hour.
He later pleaded guilty at Isleworth Crown Court in west London to 10 charges of theft, dangerous driving and no insurance.
He will be sentenced in August, with the maximum penalty for theft being seven years in prison.
However, that will be little comfort to some victims of the ongoing crime wave, who have seen their phones cruelly snatched from their hands.
Among them is Emma Hall, who had her mobile stolen by a ‘gang of cycling youths’ in east London in April this year.
The 44-year-old was able to track the device to two locations in north London before the ‘Find my iPhone’ app indicated it had been sent to China.
She told MailOnline: ‘It went to North London at two separate addresses and three weeks later it turned up in Shenzhen, China.
‘I thought it had gone there to be sold, but I became a bit obsessive about it because everyone was telling me stories about their phones being stolen and turning up in places like Egypt and Marrakech.
‘Initially there was concern because my phone was open when it was taken. They can’t access everything because of facial ID, but they could get into my photos, they could see my text messages and that scared me a little bit.
“I went home and immediately erased the phone.”
Shenzhen is also called the ‘Silicon Valley’ of China due to the number of competing companies in electronics.
Emma said phone stealing is now an ‘everyday occurrence’ in neighborhoods around Stratford, especially near the Olympic Park, Victoria Palace and Stratford International Station.
‘The exact same thing happened to my friend and they broke his wrist because he was holding his phone. He now had to have metal plates placed in his wrist,” she said.
‘Something needs to be sorted out because people don’t have to worry about going out with their phone in public. There are warnings all over social media now with people saying, ‘I just saw this kid’ – and some are starting to film them.
Figures show that a mobile phone is reported stolen every six minutes in London.
Nearly 52,000 devices were stolen in the capital last year as criminals use violence and distraction techniques to target victims.
The worst-hit area was the City of Westminster, where tourists flock for theater shows and luxury shopping. In the year to December, 18,863 incidents were reported, a 47 percent increase on 12,836 in the previous 12 months.
Camden was the second worst hit, with 4,806 incidents, followed by Southwark (4,376), Hackney (2,761), Newham (2,585), Lambeth (2,394) and Islington (2,117). In London as a whole, more than 52,000 phones were stolen last year.
Maria-Diandre Opre, a cyber security expert at Earthweb, previously told MailOnline: ‘Time and time again I have analyzed cases where stolen phones have resurfaced thousands of miles away, especially in countries like China.
‘This is not a mere coincidence, but a calculated trick by criminals to exploit vulnerabilities in law enforcement across borders.
‘For smartphone thieves, one of the biggest benefits of trading stolen devices abroad is the reduced risk of detection. Some countries simply do not have the robust legal framework and capabilities to effectively police these crimes. This allows gangs to dispose of their ill-gotten merchandise without fear of the consequences.
“Certain regions have well-established black markets dedicated to dismantling, reprogramming and reselling stolen phones.
“These underground operatives have specialized expertise to bypass security restrictions and erase their digital fingerprints from devices before using them for profit. Their complicated networks make tracking down stolen shares an enormous challenge.”