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There has been an epidemic over the past few years of iPhone thieves using scooters and electric bikes to snatch the devices out of the hands of their owners while they are walking down the street.<\/p>\n
This is the method of choice for thieves because it enables them to take an unlocked iPhone, which can be worth up to $800 more to them than a locked iPhone…<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n A report last year said the use of stolen scooters and e-bikes to snatch phones on the streets had reached an “industrial scale”. A Met Police crackdown in London saw 230 people arrested and over a thousand phones recovered in just one week.<\/p>\n Part of the problem was that police initially stopped pursuing thieves due to security concerns, when the risk to the thieves was considered too high. In the UK, it was decided to reverse this situation and allow officers to use “tactical contact” to bring down their bikes.<\/p>\n \nphone snatching on an industrial scale<\/h2>\n