This weekend, someone tried to steal my phone right out of my hand. I was rushing to the hospital to visit a relative and looking at Google Maps when it happened, in broad daylight in central London.
I felt a sudden presence next to me. Instinctively, my whole body tensed and luckily, so too did my grip around my phone. Within seconds, a cyclist appeared, a hand reached out to grab it, and they tried and failed to take it. By the time the police came to take a statement, they told me the same cyclist had made multiple other thefts across the city.
I am getting so fed up of it – to the point that, if I didn’t have to be here for my family and work, I’d honestly consider leaving London. The same thing happened to my boyfriend last week, and it happened to me a few years ago too when they actually managed to steal my phone.
Apart from the shock of it, the greatest stress came from the loss of money as well as data. Even though I work hard to back up my files, I lost precious images and conversations, including those with a friend of mine who had died.
It had a long-term impact on how I feel when I walk down the street. I’m on edge whenever a cyclist is near me, specifically when they cycle up behind me. My whole body tenses up and I pivot my neck round to see who it is. Most of the time it is, of course, a completely normal person in high vis going about their day. But something has obviously entered into my psyche now where my body remembers the trauma, and the muscle memory acts of its own accord.
If it’s not a cyclist, it’s someone who walks over to you asking you random questions whilst holding onto a newspaper; they put the paper down over your phone, and when you’re not looking, pick it back up again along with your device without you noticing. Someone tried this to me in Hyde Park years ago, and sadly it happened to my mum a few months ago, too. Replacing our devices has cost us hundreds and hundreds of pounds – and a criminal gang instead has profited.
Frustratingly, phone theft has all but been decriminalised in London. Last year, it was reported that a phone was stolen every six minutes in the city. If this year feels especially bad, the data back it up; there was a 33 per cent increase in reported mobile phone theft from the person in the year to January 2024, and over one-third of these offences took place in Westminster.
This month, Sadiq Khan’s office revealed that nearly half of reported phone thefts in London in recent years were not taken forwards for investigation. This “screening out” happens because the police decide that the lines of enquiry aren’t viable to identify a suspect or pursue leads.
I wonder if they would be more viable if the police had more power to chase cyclists and moped riders; I have heard from sources that Met Police officers are discouraged from giving chase, because of the collision risk.
Officers who knock down fleeing suspects in what is often called “tactical contact” can find themselves in misconduct hearings. The police also cannot rely on tracking data, such as Find My Phone.
The Met has said that while the data can aid investigations, due to built up areas and inaccuracy, tracking cannot be completely effective. Then there is the issue of resourcing, with police numbers increasingly dwindling. Without the power or officers to actually capture criminals, it’s not surprising so many investigations end up nowhere.
Countries also vary on how easily devices can be unlocked or dismantled. In the UK, all phones sold need to be unlocked. But what happens instead to London phones now is that they are taken abroad by criminal gangs to places like Shenzhen, China, where The Times reported lies a lucrative second-hand market where iPhones are made. Unlocked phones are resold; locked phones are dismantled and sold in parts. Stolen devices do not stay in the UK very long for this exact reason, again foiling the police’s attempts to locate them.
I don’t only think criminal gangs profit from this – tech companies do, too. Most of us who get a phone robbed end up buying a new one. I now pay my provider egregious amounts not only for my phone bill but for phone insurance, too, terrified of the inevitable eventuality someone steals my phone again.
Companies like Apple should at the very least be at the forefront of lobbying countries like China to change their laws around the policing and selling of locked devices, as well as introducing additional tech features that can make more phones useless once stolen. In the meantime, police need to be given far greater powers in the capital and elsewhere to chase and investigate phone thieves.
Because we can’t rely on policing to curb this crime, many have ended up buying tools or adopting new behaviours for protection, like having their phones on a wrist straps and only looking at them when in enclosed areas. I can remember women’s safety kits going viral after Sarah Everard’s murder; for a number of us, they will give us short-term comfort, but in the long run they’re an indictment on a police force that has failed to protect us.
I will never get my data back for my lost phone, or my money, and the time I had to deal with reporting a crime of a nearly-lost phone when I should have gone straight to the hospital to be with my family. I never thought I’d have to get used to being a victim of crime in my home city – but decriminalised phone crime means I have to constantly think about my own safety, rather than what I’ve got to get on with, in case another cyclist looms behind me.
Sophia Smith Galer is a multi-award-winning reporter, author and content creator based in London
