Phone snatching gang arrested inside London pub after snatching hordes of mobiles
Date: 2024-11-02This is the satisfying moment police stopped an e-bike riding phone robbery gang and recovered thousands of pounds worth of tech.
In a video shared by the Metropolitan Police , the gang can be seen robbing the phones off of multiple pedestrians.
But officers can then be seen entering a London pub, and placing one of the gang members under arrest.
The gang, made up of two teenagers and a 21-year-old man, has been involved in a number of phone robberies in Greenwich and Bermondsey over summer.
After the trio were arrested, hoards of stolen phones were found by officers, with 30 handed back to their owners.
In August a man dubbed ‘London’s most notorious phone thief’ was jailed for two years after snatching 24 phones in a single morning.
Sonny Stringer, 28, raced through the capital at speeds of up to 50mph as he snatched phones from unsuspecting bystanders on an electric scooter.
In little over an hour he and an accomplice had snatched two dozen phones worth around £20,000 before they were apprehended by police.
Phone thefts have more than doubled in some parts of London in recent years, according to new statistics from the Metropolitan Police.
The force’s website says: ‘Thousands of mobile phones are stolen in London every year, most commonly through pickpocketing, table surfing, and more recently an increase in snatches by criminals riding on mopeds.’
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Some 78,000 people had phones or bags stolen from them on British streets in the year to March 2024.
That is a rise of more than 150% on the 31,000 ‘snatch thefts’ in the 12 months before, according to data from the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
Figures also show that four in five police investigations were closed before a suspect was even found and just 0.8% of ‘theft from the person’ complaints resulted in a charge.
The government has pledged to crackdown on the scourge, with the Home Office saying it will work more closely with tech firms and police chiefs.
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