Mobiles spark new crime wave

Thieves are snatching mobile phones in London at a rate of almost 3,000 every month, new figures reveal today.

The figures - which represent a rise of 73 per cent on the previous year - have been disclosed as the Government today angrily accuses two of the biggest mobile phone service providers of failing to take responsibility for combating the crime trend which makes millions of their customers targets for attack.

Whitehall sources say Vodafone and BT Cellnet are refusing to pay for the technology which would allow them to disable a phone as soon as it is stolen.

Sources close to Home Secretary David Blunkett said he is "very frustrated" and feels the mobile phone industry is not doing enough, 12 months after the Home Office, police and phone providers came together to form an anticrime task force.

The Home Office source said: "Particularly with teenagers being robbed, the industry has to accept they need to do more both to make telephones difficult to sell on and to publicise what they are doing."

The Government's irritation has surfaced as a Home Office study of the phone theft phenomenon reveals robberies increased fivefold in the space of two years. Half of the victims are school children and the peak age for the mobile phone robbers is 16.

The official study also shows the most likely phone robber is male, younger than most other kinds of robbers, most probably black and operating in a gang.

In the capital, 71 per cent of mobile phone thieves are black, in Birmingham 34 per cent are Asian and 54 per cent black, and in Stockport 76 per cent are white.

Research also shows mobile phone robbery is predominantly a male-on-male and black-on-white teenage crime in the four city centres studied. Young male phone users have cause to be most wary, the report says. Fewer than 10 per cent of mobile phone thefts are carried out by teenage girls.

However, while the Government figures show robberies involving mobiles topped 25,000 in England and Wales for the year ending March 2001, latest Scotland Yard analysis shows the problem in London has surged to unprecedented levels since then ? there were 22,384 street robberies involving mobile phones between April and November last year. This is equivalent to 2,798 per month, compared to 1,608 a month in 2000/2001.

The alarming rise has been underlined in the past week after a 19-year-old woman was shot in the head by a mugger who stole her mobile phone in Walthamstow. In a separate incident, 10 children were robbed of their mobiles as they left a cinema in Surrey Quays when they were set upon by a gang of up to 40 youths last week.

Each mobile phone has an ID which can be accessed by tapping *#06# into the handset. If the phone is stolen, people should be able to telephone their service provider, quoting this IMEI number, to stop the phone being used ? Orange, One2One, and Virgin all offer a service where they can immobilise stolen phones, but BT Cellnet and Vodafone do not.

However, both companies today strongly refuted the Home Office criticism, insisting there is no reliable technology to disable a handset once it has been stolen. A BT Cellnet spokeswoman said: ?It would cost £16 million to introduce and if we felt it would solve the problem we would do it.?

Meanwhile, a Vodafone spokeswoman added: ?IMEI was like a fingerprint to the handset, but not anymore because cheap software downloads can give the phone a new identity.?

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