London's Metropolitan Police says it is making progress in its fight against phone theft, with new figures suggesting the criminal trade is becoming harder to profit from. The force's commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, set out an approach built on two separate responsibilities. The first is to increase the jeopardy faced by criminals, and the second is to push technology companies to make stolen handsets worthless. Together, these strands are presented as the way to break a problem that has plagued the capital.
On the enforcement side, the focus is on confronting the criminals directly. That means increasing the jeopardy to offenders, catching the young people involved on the streets, and breaking the organised crime networks that export stolen phones internationally. The commissioner framed this as going after both the individuals snatching phones and the wider criminal structures that move them on. The aim is to disrupt the trade at every level rather than treating each theft in isolation.
To back that up, the Met says it is carrying out another surge of activity this week. The commissioner described taking part in a phone shop raid the previous day, where 200 phones were found. He said those responsible would be going to prison, pointing to the operation as an example of the kind of pressure now being applied. The raids are intended to show that handling stolen devices carries real consequences.
Alongside the raids, the force argues that the deeper problem is the value criminals can still extract from stolen phones. According to the commissioner, the profit exists because the technology security has not been good enough. For two years, the Met has been putting pressure on companies such as Apple and Google, telling them they need to step up and improve their security. The goal is to stop criminals being able to factory reset stolen phones and exploit the value locked inside them.
The commissioner said that pressure is finally producing results, with Apple having made some upgrades recently. He pointed to what he called the interesting bit of data behind the campaign. Even just a few months ago, around 80 percent of stolen phones were being reactivated, but in recent weeks that figure has fallen to about 20 percent. He described this as a sign that the model underpinning the thefts is starting to break.
Even so, the force is not assuming the problem is solved. The commissioner acknowledged that criminals will try new things, including potentially breaking phones up for parts to keep extracting value. His argument is that the difference now is that the technology companies are at the table. With that cooperation, he said, the authorities can drive down the profit available to criminals while driving up the jeopardy they face.
The plan comes against a backdrop of public frustration that the police have not taken phone theft seriously enough. The commissioner was challenged with the statistic that only 1 percent of phone thefts in London result in a charge or conviction, a figure that has left many victims feeling it is hardly worth reporting a stolen phone. He insisted the force is taking the issue massively seriously, and pointed to Westminster, where he said phone theft is now close to half the rate it was a year ago, describing that fall as extraordinary.