It’s horrible and it’s happened to me but it’s difficult to see how it can be stopped, though.
You just have to be very careful with your phone in public places.
Karen_Is_ASlur on
Yes, it’s horrible and they are utter cunts… but just don’t walk down the street waving your phone out in front of you, head down, oblivious to who might be approaching. I see so many people like this every day and it makes easy pickings for the thieving bastards.
StagnantMonk on
Once upon a time the general public would help and assist
Now I hear people shouting oi..it’s not your business.. you can’t do that?! Let them go man just accept it…WHY?! If any crime wave began around you.. wouldn’t you want to stop it?
jodrellbank_pants on
phones are to easy to unlock, and people walk around like zombies glued to their phones and unaware of their surrounding.
SomniaStellae on
It is almost as if, carrying an expensive item around in front of you, with your attention distracted is an awful idea.
May seem like victim blaming, but i call it common sense. Criminals most have had a wet dream if you told them: In a few years people will be carrying around expensive items held out so you can snatch them.
I was in Manchester the other day, I watched a women stick her phone in her back pocket, almost totally hanging out.
Being a dude, I didn’t feel comfortable approaching her, as it may seem creepy given the phone location, but if I had my wife with me, I would have asked her to tell her that the phone was basically asking to be snatched.
marxistopportunist on
I have a top secret hack to share,
Never buy a phone worth more than 150 quid
Worldly_Table_5092 on
Well maybe if there was repercussions it would stop rising. Hire me chief, let me chase criminals with my beaty stick
[deleted] on
[removed]
bitch_fitching on
The police could set up some stings, surveillance, find where the phones are going. If the phones are going abroad, charge the couriers. If the phones are being used here, charge the recipients.
A lot of crime is not being punished because the people committing it are poor and many, just rotating in and out of prison. Stop the economics and the ring leaders, the crime stops.
The problem is that it would cost money, police would need to be competent and trained. The costs of not doing anything to stop crime, is probably much greater. Be a soft touch, and that emboldens criminal gangs.
scooches66 on
I don’t understand why people need to have their phone glued to their hand every second of the day! Put the damn thing in your bag/pocket and concentrate on what’s going on around you! If your phone is hidden, you’re not a target!
fucking-nonsense on
> the unstoppable rise
“No Way To Prevent This”, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
RaymondBumcheese on
One thing they don’t mention is that quite often someone from a factory in china will contact you pretending to have bought your stolen phone and saying they can still see your bank details on it so you need to remove it from ‘find my’ so they can wipe it.
Don’t do that. It means they can resell it for full value. If you ignore them they have to just strip it for parts for much less money.
It’s a little thing but we have to make it less lucrative.
NoRecipe3350 on
Yes it’s horrible, had a phone stolen (not from a bike) and basically lost contact with some people I’d met fairly recently (I was travelling) that I’d consider keeping as long term friends. Couldn’t recover any data from the messenger app. Furthermore I was messaging them every few days, then just stopped out of the blue.
Boomers and their address/phone number books were pretty right.
ShermyTheCat on
LET’S JUST ALL AGREE THAT WEARING A LITTLE WRIST STRAP IS REALLY COOL
No-Ambassador2234 on
Stop mindlessly walking around on your phone then. Not hard. Keep your hands in your pocket. If you need to use your phone, stand to the side, away from the crowd. Be aware of your surroundings.
thermosifounas on
The amount of victim blaming in this thread is unreal. Practically one step away from “she was looking for it, she was wearing a mini skirt and crop top”
People should be allowed to buy, use and enjoy expensive things in public. The idea of a mobile phone is to…well…be mobile.
Yes, opportunistic criminals have existed since the dawn of time and common sense is useful.
But to reach the rates that it has at this stage, is a complete failure of the state that simply hasn’t recognised or, to the extent it has, addressed the problem.
Everything else is cheap regressive excuses.
FeralSquirrels on
Well, perhaps if the Police as a career was given some teeth in terms of decent pay, pension and motivations to join _and_ the Government put a vested interest in ensuring they were funded properly and _not_ used as a political tool every 5 minutes _then_ they’d be in a position to do something.
However it’s not a case of “unstoppable” and more a question of _how_ can it be stopped – you can’t nick everyone on a bike, but if someone _does_ make off on one, we all know there’ll be an immediate “well sh*t if we chase on a car, remember what happened _last_ time” because you need to determine what’s “acceptable force” before someone’s wee laddies come acropper and end up on the front page of tabloids.
There’s ways and means, it just means that the repurcussions of committing crime mean that yes, there’s a risk that being apprehended and held to account for those crimes may incur the penalty of “if you keep legging it when demanded to stop, you’ll be _made_ to stop”.
OP1KenOP on
We should be fucking raging about this. The unstoppable rose of motorcycle, phone and cycle theft in plain sight while working classes pay more and more tax, and yet billionaire (corp etc) taxes remain fixed is a joke.
On top of that, they still find plenty of money to buy bus lane cameras, congestion cameras, pay for TV license enforcement, pay parking attendants and of course – buy and maintain speed cameras.
Given that vandalism in plain sight is no longer enough of a crime for them to care about – why don’t we just vandalise parking meters, speed cameras, congestion and bus lane cams in protest?
It might actually wake them up to policing vandalism and theft if it’s hitting the government’s coffers.
fishandbanana on
Forget wearing something like the meta smart glasses in the future. we will have to alter our electroning purchases based on theft rate in the country.
Ebeneezer_G00de on
I w0nDeR wHy tHeY d0n’T hAvE sNaTcH tHefTs iN RiyaDh oR DubAi?
UCthrowaway78404 on
I never been phone snatched but I hate these bikes riding 15mph+ on pavement
frogstarB on
We live in an area with kids on those fast e-bikes and I always wondered if they’re part of this nuisance. sure enough, police came and rounded them up a few weeks ago and confiscated their bikes.
Might not seem like much for anyone who’s already lost their phone but it was good to see the police are trying to catch these perps !
woody83060 on
I think mossad should provide the security features on all phones.
MDK1980 on
Remember an interview I saw with one of the gang leaders. What he said was so blatantly obvious, but no-one seems to ever have caught on. Basically, he said that if you had £1200 cash on your person, you’d make sure you kept it out of sight. You wouldn’t walk around with it in your hand, waving it around, and you definitely wouldn’t leave it lying on a table out in the open in a coffee shop while you were distracted talking to your mate.
parkway_parkway on
I blame the NIMBY’s, they’ve literally ruined everything and if life were cheaper it would be much easier to convince people just to work a normal job and buy what they want to have.
Fine-Night-243 on
Expect to be downvoted for victim blaming but if you walked around holding £300 in notes outstretched in your hand in a busy area you wouldn’t be surprised to see someone try and take it.
MachineHot3089 on
All very well all the demand for proactive policing in this thread, yet a lot of proactive cops get thrown under the bus at the earliest opportunity.
27 Comments
It’s horrible and it’s happened to me but it’s difficult to see how it can be stopped, though.
You just have to be very careful with your phone in public places.
Yes, it’s horrible and they are utter cunts… but just don’t walk down the street waving your phone out in front of you, head down, oblivious to who might be approaching. I see so many people like this every day and it makes easy pickings for the thieving bastards.
Once upon a time the general public would help and assist
Now I hear people shouting oi..it’s not your business.. you can’t do that?! Let them go man just accept it…WHY?! If any crime wave began around you.. wouldn’t you want to stop it?
phones are to easy to unlock, and people walk around like zombies glued to their phones and unaware of their surrounding.
It is almost as if, carrying an expensive item around in front of you, with your attention distracted is an awful idea.
May seem like victim blaming, but i call it common sense. Criminals most have had a wet dream if you told them: In a few years people will be carrying around expensive items held out so you can snatch them.
I was in Manchester the other day, I watched a women stick her phone in her back pocket, almost totally hanging out.
Being a dude, I didn’t feel comfortable approaching her, as it may seem creepy given the phone location, but if I had my wife with me, I would have asked her to tell her that the phone was basically asking to be snatched.
I have a top secret hack to share,
Never buy a phone worth more than 150 quid
Well maybe if there was repercussions it would stop rising. Hire me chief, let me chase criminals with my beaty stick
[removed]
The police could set up some stings, surveillance, find where the phones are going. If the phones are going abroad, charge the couriers. If the phones are being used here, charge the recipients.
A lot of crime is not being punished because the people committing it are poor and many, just rotating in and out of prison. Stop the economics and the ring leaders, the crime stops.
The problem is that it would cost money, police would need to be competent and trained. The costs of not doing anything to stop crime, is probably much greater. Be a soft touch, and that emboldens criminal gangs.
I don’t understand why people need to have their phone glued to their hand every second of the day! Put the damn thing in your bag/pocket and concentrate on what’s going on around you! If your phone is hidden, you’re not a target!
> the unstoppable rise
“No Way To Prevent This”, Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens
One thing they don’t mention is that quite often someone from a factory in china will contact you pretending to have bought your stolen phone and saying they can still see your bank details on it so you need to remove it from ‘find my’ so they can wipe it.
Don’t do that. It means they can resell it for full value. If you ignore them they have to just strip it for parts for much less money.
It’s a little thing but we have to make it less lucrative.
Yes it’s horrible, had a phone stolen (not from a bike) and basically lost contact with some people I’d met fairly recently (I was travelling) that I’d consider keeping as long term friends. Couldn’t recover any data from the messenger app. Furthermore I was messaging them every few days, then just stopped out of the blue.
Boomers and their address/phone number books were pretty right.
LET’S JUST ALL AGREE THAT WEARING A LITTLE WRIST STRAP IS REALLY COOL
Stop mindlessly walking around on your phone then. Not hard. Keep your hands in your pocket. If you need to use your phone, stand to the side, away from the crowd. Be aware of your surroundings.
The amount of victim blaming in this thread is unreal. Practically one step away from “she was looking for it, she was wearing a mini skirt and crop top”
People should be allowed to buy, use and enjoy expensive things in public. The idea of a mobile phone is to…well…be mobile.
Yes, opportunistic criminals have existed since the dawn of time and common sense is useful.
But to reach the rates that it has at this stage, is a complete failure of the state that simply hasn’t recognised or, to the extent it has, addressed the problem.
Everything else is cheap regressive excuses.
Well, perhaps if the Police as a career was given some teeth in terms of decent pay, pension and motivations to join _and_ the Government put a vested interest in ensuring they were funded properly and _not_ used as a political tool every 5 minutes _then_ they’d be in a position to do something.
However it’s not a case of “unstoppable” and more a question of _how_ can it be stopped – you can’t nick everyone on a bike, but if someone _does_ make off on one, we all know there’ll be an immediate “well sh*t if we chase on a car, remember what happened _last_ time” because you need to determine what’s “acceptable force” before someone’s wee laddies come acropper and end up on the front page of tabloids.
There’s ways and means, it just means that the repurcussions of committing crime mean that yes, there’s a risk that being apprehended and held to account for those crimes may incur the penalty of “if you keep legging it when demanded to stop, you’ll be _made_ to stop”.
We should be fucking raging about this. The unstoppable rose of motorcycle, phone and cycle theft in plain sight while working classes pay more and more tax, and yet billionaire (corp etc) taxes remain fixed is a joke.
On top of that, they still find plenty of money to buy bus lane cameras, congestion cameras, pay for TV license enforcement, pay parking attendants and of course – buy and maintain speed cameras.
Given that vandalism in plain sight is no longer enough of a crime for them to care about – why don’t we just vandalise parking meters, speed cameras, congestion and bus lane cams in protest?
It might actually wake them up to policing vandalism and theft if it’s hitting the government’s coffers.
Forget wearing something like the meta smart glasses in the future. we will have to alter our electroning purchases based on theft rate in the country.
I w0nDeR wHy tHeY d0n’T hAvE sNaTcH tHefTs iN RiyaDh oR DubAi?
I never been phone snatched but I hate these bikes riding 15mph+ on pavement
We live in an area with kids on those fast e-bikes and I always wondered if they’re part of this nuisance. sure enough, police came and rounded them up a few weeks ago and confiscated their bikes.
Might not seem like much for anyone who’s already lost their phone but it was good to see the police are trying to catch these perps !
I think mossad should provide the security features on all phones.
Remember an interview I saw with one of the gang leaders. What he said was so blatantly obvious, but no-one seems to ever have caught on. Basically, he said that if you had £1200 cash on your person, you’d make sure you kept it out of sight. You wouldn’t walk around with it in your hand, waving it around, and you definitely wouldn’t leave it lying on a table out in the open in a coffee shop while you were distracted talking to your mate.
I blame the NIMBY’s, they’ve literally ruined everything and if life were cheaper it would be much easier to convince people just to work a normal job and buy what they want to have.
Expect to be downvoted for victim blaming but if you walked around holding £300 in notes outstretched in your hand in a busy area you wouldn’t be surprised to see someone try and take it.
All very well all the demand for proactive policing in this thread, yet a lot of proactive cops get thrown under the bus at the earliest opportunity.