Mobile telephone trade urged to ‘design out’ their enchantment to thieves
M
obile telephone companies have been urged to “design out” their enchantment to thieves to assist sort out the rising variety of robberies in London.
Mayor Sadiq Khan and Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley have known as on the trade to give you “bold and innovative” options alongside the traces of automotive producers, who labored with police to scale back the thefts of automotive radios and sat navs by integrating them into car dashboards.
It comes because the Met targets theft hotspots in London with boosted neighbourhood policing as a part of the New Met for London plan.
According to Met figures, 38% of all private robberies final yr, equating to greater than 9,500 offences, concerned a telephone being stolen, whereas practically 70% of all thefts in London final yr associated to cell phones.
Many robberies concerned violence and weapons, leaving victims traumatised and, in probably the most excessive instances, significantly or fatally injured.
Speaking after becoming a member of a patrol in Ealing, west London, Sir Mark Rowley advised the PA news company: “We can’t win this battle on our own and that’s why the mayor and I have written demanding that the major phone companies meet us in a roundtable to fix this problem.
“Their technical expertise is critical because their current model allows a stolen phone to be registered and used by somebody else.
“As long as that’s possible there is a criminal market which makes the theft of your phone worth hundreds of pounds to the thief. We have to break that market and only the phone companies can do it.”
The commissioner mentioned the Met Police are constructing “the strongest neighbourhood policing offer we’ve ever had, using data and technology to target hotspots, and arresting those handling stolen devices wherever and whenever we can”.
The mayor and Met Commissioner mentioned “more can be and should be done” by the cell phone trade to make it more durable for stolen telephones to be offered on, repurposed by distributors and re-used illegally.
They have collectively written to cell phone suppliers inviting them to attend a roundtable dialogue to concentrate on how the police, City Hall and the cell phone trade may work collectively to scale back cell phone robberies in London and past.
Mr Khan advised PA: “Mobile phones being stolen is traumatic for the victim. It’s traumatic because you could be the victim of a robbery. It’s traumatic because your personal data is on that phone. It could be personal photographs, it could be personal emails and texts, but also your wallet as well.”
He added: “We were told it was impossible to design out the theft of car stereos and sat navs.
“We are hoping there is a can-do attitude from phone networks and phone manufacturers to make it so that a stolen phone is worthless to a thief that has no sell-on value.”
Claire Waxman, London’s Independent Victims’ Commissioner, mentioned: “Today our lives are on our phones, from our family photos, online banking, travel cards, wallet and emails, and it’s just far too straightforward for thieves to sell them on quickly for a profit.
“We need a long-term solution to the menace of mobile phone crime and the industry have a unique role and opportunity now to work with us to develop innovative deterrents that can prevent more people falling victim to this awful crime.”