The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, and Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service, Sir Mark Rowley, will meet today with world-leading mobile phone companies to ask them to commit to designing out mobile phone robbery.
Apple, Samsung and Google are just some of the leading mobile manufacturers that will be represented in the meeting at City Hall which will include representatives from major UK mobile phone network providers.
The meeting will focus on how the police, City Hall and the mobile phone industry can work better together to find the most effective deterrent and ultimately significantly reduce mobile phone robberies in London and beyond.
It follows a call to action from the Mayor of London and Met Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley in August for the mobile phone industry to play their part and “deliver bold and innovative technological solutions” to help tackle the rising number of robberies and thefts in the capital.1
Figures show criminal demand for the latest devices continues to rise. In the last 12 months there has been a 28 per cent increase in mobile phone robbery in London and a 22% increase in theft of mobile phones. This represents a total of 57,174 mobile phones reported stolen and equates to an average of 157 mobile phones stolen every day in London.
The goal is to make it harder for stolen phones to be re-used and registered for services not just on phone networks but also for services provided by Apple, Google Play, Samsung and other online stores.
Existing security measures, including pin, fingerprint and facial ID, are not deterring criminals from stealing mobile phones which remain in high demand and are being sold and re-used in a lucrative underground criminal market. And the release of new more expensive mobile phones is having an impact on the increase in robberies and thefts in London and across the UK.
“This meeting is an important milestone to developing a practical and long-term solution to ending the menace of mobile phone crime which we know is driving violence and criminality in our communities – not just in London but across the UK”, says The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan. “Right now, it is far too easy and profitable for criminals to repurpose and sell on stolen phones. That must change.”
According to Met Commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, the current mobile phone operating systems available in the United Kingdom make it far too easy for criminals to steal devices, re-register them, and sell them on.
“This fuels a highly lucrative and profitable criminal market across the capital, and is central to the rise in thefts, robbery and violent offending we’ve seen over the last two years”, says Rowley. “Over the last six months more than 26,000 phones have been stolen from Londoners. We can’t wait another six months to take action.”
Today’s meeting will also focus on the evolving nature of mobile phone theft – ask for commitments to work to look at options that will make it substantially harder for phones to be broken up for parts abroad. It will also seek to counter the growing menace of identity fraud whereby criminals steal the digital identity of victims and use it to access electronic payment apps, bank accounts and other personal information.