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Police training on their new high speed e-bikes caught a “phone snatcher” in less than 60 seconds – as he surrenders by raising his hands aloft.
Scotland Yard is determined to beat criminals at their own game after buying a fleet of lightweight Sur-ron off-road cycles.
Muggers use them to silently approach victims standing on pavements - and then evade capture by fleeing on the electric motorbikes than can accelerate from 0-50mph in 3.6 seconds.
Weaving through heavy traffic, they easily slash the 40 minutes it often takes a response car to get from Oxford Street to Finsbury Park, a well-worn five-mile route.
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See also: Fightback as London becomes the phone theft capital of Europe
As part of its fightback against London’s £50 million-a-year trade in snatched smartphones, Metropolitan Police officers are undergoing intense training on marked Sur-ron Ultra Bees at their training base in Gravesend, Kent.
The Standard was invited to see the nippy Chinese-made e-bikes being put through their paces around the site’s mock urban town centre.
Met Police rider catches up with Sur-ron phone "thief"Anthony France During road tests, it was evident how snatchers have - until now - left regular bulky force motorbikes weighing four times as much in their wake.
But Sergeant Ryan Perry - riding the Sur-ron with Met logo, flashing lights and sirens - was able to catch a mugger on two wheels in less than a minute because of its greater speed and mobility.
We watched as the deflated “thief” is left with no choice other than to simply throw his hands up in the air after a brief chase and is arrested.
Sgt Perry explained the bikes are already having a deterrent effect in mobile theft hotspots of London’s West End, Lambeth, Southwark and Camden.
He said: “We’ve done a number of operations when we’ve utilised them and we tend not to see any offences taking place.
“They’re very popular bikes and everyone takes notice of them.
Mobile phone mugger Sonny Stringer, 28, from Islington, jailed at Isleworth Crown CourtSupplied“When that filters through to them, they get to hear we’re out and about we don’t see them.
“They’re wise not to come out.”
London has become Europe’s phone snatch capital with criminals taking 70,137 last year - 192 a day or one every seven-and-a-half minutes.
The capital’s most notorious thief Sonny Stringer, 28, was jailed for grabbing an astonishing 24 in one morning.
Sergeant Ryan Perry, riding a Sur-ron, was able to catch muggerAnthony France Police and tech companies - including Apple, Samsung and Google - are working together to improve anti-theft measures and make stolen mobiles effectively worthless to criminals.
Officers want a block on swiped handsets re-connecting to cloud services.
Phone-tracking data and intelligence is now used in tracing people with stolen devices.
Last year, four members of a gang who handled more than 5,000 phones were sentenced to a total of 18 years.