This isn't just one in six phone thefts in the UK, it's one in six in the whole of Europe.

This is according to The Times but I can't find a link to the story, and if I could it's probably paywalled anyway (am reading this in the print edition).

Here's the Guardian's reporting of this.

by acrane55

16 comments

  1. But the Met Police put those cheeky blue plaques on the ground. Can’t believe that didn’t solve it.

  5. Met needs to bring back “tactical contacts” with these E-bike thieves.

  6. It’s getting out of control. I only have a landline now and even that was stolen by immigrants.

  7. people act like this is complicated.

    genuinely punish criminals, and the majority of them won’t bother.

    of course society will always have cunts, but rational choice as a criminological idea is at some basic level nearly always true.

    you wouldn’t steal a phone if you knew you were going to get your hands chopped off, or get sent to a penal colony, or be hung.

    the vast majority of phone snatchers are morally ambiguous opportunists making a rational choice imo, weighing up opportunity against costs.

    making punishment for crime more painful is absolutely within our control and would do wonders imo.

    oh, and actually punishing people in the first place instead of pandering to them.

  8. If a crime goes unpunished is it even a crime any more? They know they can completely get away with it so why would they stop.

    The Met have completely failed us.

  10. That’s what happens when minor crimes are essentially legalised

  11. Phone theft is obviously a problem, but I call bullshit on that stat. If you read the article it’s based on one insurance company getting a disproportionate number of claims from the UK market. Plenty of issues with extrapolating that for statistical purposes.

  12. Google/Apple could do more, but it would be bad for sales.

  13. Don’t care for that, but they do care if you wanna wank. Funny that

  14. I’ve seen it happen in person and it is usually someone walking with their phone in their hand, I don’t victim blame but you just cannot do that in central London 💀 have a phone in a pocket with a zip or even better a jacket with a pocket on the inside

  15. > 16% of all phone thefts in Europe

    Fuck me. We knew it was bad, but that’s insane.

    > The Metropolitan police said about 80,000 phones were stolen in London last year, describing the phenomenon as an “organised criminal enterprise”. The stolen devices had a street value of about £20m.

    How many of those were solved?

    How many were even investigated?

    How much did their owners have to pay to replace them, £200M?

    > James Conway, a Met police commander specialising in phone thefts […]

    Specialising in what, exactly? Certainly not specialising in solving phone thefts or reducing them.

    I’m actually low key surprised the Met even bothered to appoint someone to look at phone thefts, it’s basically legalised nowadays and has been for 15 years.

  16. Because politicians and police don’t care about crime

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