A top detective has revealed how despite ultra modern tracking technology that lets people see where thieves who have stolen their phones have taken them, police officers are often left unable to recover the valuable items.
The scourge of phone snatching in Britain’s cities has come the fore in recent months, with numerous videos showing criminals swiping 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 phones, the crimewave has seen victims lose items of great sentimental value, and having to shell out on new devices.
For many the most frustrating aspect of these brazen thefts is the struggle in getting their phones back before they are sold on the black market in the UK or as far afield as China.
With the growing popularity of tracking apps allowing people to narrow the location of the their phones down to the individual street corners, it has become easy to see where your device is once it is lift by the lawless subsection of society.
A phone snatcher lurks behind a woman moments before he steals her device in Marylebone, London, in April
However, despite having the technology to get a location of the device, police are often powerless to retrieve them, according to one top cop.
Inspector Dan Green, who heads a team devoted to dealing with thefts including phone snatching at City of London Police, says the usefulness of apps such as ‘Find My’ can only go so far.
Writing in The Sunday Times, he said: ‘We realise it’s frustrating for victims who want us to turn up and break down the door because their phone is pinging at an address. But it’s not as simple as that.’
Insp. Green said that some of these locations will not be worth sending officers to as 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 that going to these places also requires manpower, with at least four officers needed every time as phone snatchers are ‘frequently involved in other types of serious organised crime.’
He added that on occasions they have found ‘more stolen property, drugs, large quantities of cash and weapons including large zombie-style knives’.
Insp. Green also said that while tracking apps can give a location, they are sometimes not accurate enough to prove truly helpful.
He said: ‘The Find My app might show that an iPhone is in a block of flats, but it doesn’t show you anything on the vertical axis and the building might have ten floors. So we have to decide whether to knock at every flat in the block.’
The detective added that this doesn’t mean location software is never useful – he said that it can be used in tandem with other information such as intelligence that a known thief lives there to provide the basis for a search.
But if a suspect denies them entry, police sometimes have to get a court order to go inside, another process that takes time and requires detailed information to satisfy the courts to grant access. A location from the ‘Find My’ app is sometimes not enough to do this.
Insp. Green added that police officers can sometimes force entry to a property, but only to make an arrest and once they have reasonable grounds to believe the suspect is inside.
Emma Hall, 44, was the victim of a phone theft on April 29 just yards from her London flat
Emma tracked her phone to two addresses in North London before the device popped up again in China weeks later
In a separate incident in May, a thief on a bike was seen snatching a victim’s phone from her hands in broad daylight at a bus stop in central London
In the video, a cyclist dressed all in black rides up to group of people standing near the Curzon cinema on Shaftesbury Avenue in London’s West End
He said: ‘So we are getting out to these addresses, but we just cannot do every single one. Having said all that, we are deploying officers every time that we can and we are getting great results.’
Earlier this month the force released footage showing police taking down Sonny Stringer, one of London’s most prolific phone thieves as he sped though the capital on an e-bike.
The 28-year-old was rammed by officers and found carrying 24 mobile phones worth £20,000 – he had stolen them over the course of just one hour.
He later pleaded guilty to ten charges of theft, dangerous driving and having no insurance, at Isleworth Crown Court in West London.
He will be sentenced in August with the maximum penalty for theft being seven years in jail.
However, that will be scant consolation to some of the victims of the ongoing crimewave who have seen their phones cruelly snatched from their hands.
Among those is Emma Hall, who had her mobile stolen by a ‘gang of youths on bikes’ in east London in April this year.
The 44-year-old was able to track it down to two locations in North London, before the ‘Find my iPhone’ app showed it had been shipped to China.
She told MailOnline: ‘It headed to North London at two separate addresses and then three weeks later it popped up in Shenzhen, China.
‘I imagined it had gone over there to be sold on, but I got a bit obsessive about it because everyone was telling me stories about their phones being stolen and turning up in places like Egypt and Marrakesh.
‘There was a concern initially because my phone was open at the time it was snatched. They can’t access everything because of face ID but they could get into my photos, they could look at my text messages and that freaked me out a bit.
Sonny Stringer, 28, was taken down by police after stealing £20,000-worth of mobile phones in the space of an hour
‘I went home and erased the phone straight away.’
Shenzhen has been referred to as China’s ‘Silicon Valley’ for the number of competing businesses in electronics.
Emma said phone snatching is an ‘everyday occurrence’ in neighbourhoods around Stratford now, particularly close to the Olympic Park, Victoria Palace and Stratford International Station.
‘My friend had the exact same thing happen to him and they broke his wrist because he held onto his phone. He’s had to have metal plates put in his wrist now,’ she said.
‘Something needs sorting because people shouldn’t have to be worrying about going out with their phones in public. There are warnings all over social media now with people saying ‘just spotted this kid’ – and some are starting to film them’.
Figures have shown that a mobile phone is reported as stolen in London every six minutes.
Nearly 52,000 devices were stolen in the capital last year as criminals use violence and distraction techniques to target victims.
The worst-hit borough was the City of Westminster, where tourists flock for theatre shows and high-end shopping, with 18,863 reported incidents in the year to December – up 47 per cent from 12,836 in the previous 12 months.
Camden was the second worst affected, 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 again, I’ve analysed cases where stolen phones have resurfaced thousands of miles away, particularly in countries like China.
‘This isn’t mere coincidence, but a calculated ploy by criminals to exploit vulnerabilities in law enforcement across borders.
‘For smartphone thieves, one of the biggest draws to trafficking stolen devices abroad is the reduced risk of detection. Some nations simply lack the robust legal framework and tracking capabilities to effectively police these crimes. This allows gangs to offload their ill-gotten merchandise with little fear of consequences.
‘Certain regions have well-established black markets dedicated to disassembling, reprogramming, and reselling pilfered phones.
‘These underground operatives possess specialised expertise to bypass security restrictions and wipe devices of their digital fingerprints before flipping them for a profit. Their intricate networks make tracing stolen stock an immense challenge.’