Overview

• The Met recorded a 50% reduction in phone theft and a 13% fall in robbery during April and May compared with the opening months of last year’s financial cycle.
• Officers attribute the decline to targeted operations against organised phone-theft gangs supported by a new fleet of high-speed e-bikes.
• After 18 months of appeals, Apple and Google have still not agreed to block stolen devices from accessing their cloud services by blacklisting reported handset serial numbers.
• London saw 80,000 smartphones stolen in 2024—a 25% rise from 2023—with street losses of around £20 million and replacement costs totalling £50 million.
• Approximately three-quarters of stolen phones are trafficked abroad to destinations such as Algeria and China, where network-level blocking is less effective.