The phone theft victims and the battle to catch the snatchers

It happens in a heartbeat. The whir of a bike, the scrape of an arm, and within seconds your entire digital life can be compromised. Shock and disbelief happens hundreds of times a day on British streets.

The impact of phone theft is often beyond financial.

Fenella Rawling’s brand new iPhone 16 was stolen during a shopping trip in Cambridge in August.

The device contained tons of precious memories of her mother, who had incurable lung cancer, and since the photos were not backed up and iCloud was not set up, they were now lost forever.

“These are memories I can never get back,” she said through tears.

Using an app called Find My, Fenella could see in real time on her mobile phone that she was traveling to London by train. A week later he was in Dubai. Then China. Then came a flood of phishing messages asking him to reveal his account details or wipe the phone.

“I don’t know how long I’ll stay with my mom,” he added. “I don’t want to lose anything.”

Stories like Fenella’s are becoming increasingly common as organized crime groups begin stealing phones, which can yield up to £400 per device stolen.

Convicted phone snatcher Sonny Stringer was found to have stolen 24 phones in one hour. He was sentenced to two years in prison in August last year.

“There are rich choices in London,” said Paul Brennan, president of the Licensed Taxi Drivers Association.

“No one thinks that something will happen to them until something happens to them, that’s the problem. The chances of this happening are increasing rapidly,” he said.

“They’re always on the electric bike because they can get away so quickly. They’re usually all dressed in black, with balaclavas and hoods.

“We have regular customers who come from all over the world, but now they’re calling and cancelling. They’re saying they won’t come to London because it’s not safe.”

Accordingly Met with police figures117,211 phones were stolen in 2024; This figure is up 25% from 91,481 in 2019.

The Met said purse snatchers on London’s streets mostly rode light, electric motorbikes that reached speeds of up to 60 mph (97 km/h).

Due to their prevalence among purse-snatching gangs, the Metropolitan Police has now invested in its own fleet of high-powered bikes to keep up with them.

“They hate that we have them,” said Sergeant Ryan Perry of the police force.

“They hate that we exclude them. From our point of view and from the public’s point of view, that’s perfect.

“If we can deter crime then it’s ideal. If they want to come out and play, we’ll be there to track them down and bring them to court.”

The fight against phone thieves is not only done in the field.

“We are a phone thief’s worst nightmare,” said National Police Air Service (NPAS) tactical flight officer Andrew Lawless.

“Once we are burdened, the likelihood of them escaping is significantly reduced.

“We can see a lot of things from the window. We can use our camera and vehicles to locate suspects and stay with them,” he said.

Sergeant Glen Walker, NPAS London base manager at Epping Forest, showed the BBC how on-board cameras could zoom in on suspects’ faces.

“Even the presence of a helicopter in that area can be a real deterrent,” he said.

“Obviously we’re a pretty noisy aircraft and if we’re 300 meters above Westminster it means there’s been a string of robberies, usually you’ll get the suspect to hear or see the helicopter and get it on the ground.”

Police are not alone in the fight against phone snatchers in London.

Diego Galdino is a self-described “pickpocket hunter”.

The man, who works as a delivery driver during the day, started filming moments of pickpockets and then posting them on the internet after he said he witnessed them almost every day.

The “PickPocketLondon” account has amassed millions of views within a few months.

Mr. Galdino said it was his “instinct” to warn people when he saw thieves in action.

“I’m noticing that crime in the city is getting worse every day,” he said.

“They cover their faces, there are always several of them and they are never alone, mostly in groups.

“When [a theft] “If it happens, you can’t find the item because they’ve already given it to someone else, so I always try to shout before they take it,” he said.

It appears that pickpockets have long been a transient population in the capital, moving around the capitals effectively and moving on when their faces become known to the authorities.

British Transport Police (BTP) have also seen an increase in the number of phone thieves traveling to and from London each day; officers say it’s “just running a day’s work.”

As the BBC joins patrol at Finsbury Park Station, a British Transport Police officer flags down a man passing by.

“The man in the black baseball cap – we know him – lives in Portsmouth,” the officer said. “He travels from Portsmouth to London every day to steal phones. It’s their full-time job.”

After following the suspect from a distance for a while, he leaves the station without trying to grab him. Officers are then called to look for another potential thief seen in the area.

BTP officers often patrol the transport network undercover, particularly around known hotspot areas such as Finsbury Park.

“They do this on an industrial level, to make a lot of money,” the police officer said, adding that many thieves fly into the UK from abroad, spend a few weeks in the UK to commit theft and then continue.

However, phone snatchers in the region are also trained at home.

“Over the last two years there has been a large influx of men from this area who are part of a wider network of thieves – probably in the area of ​​around 600 people,” the officer said.

“We definitely have footage of at least 600 people from that gang.”