But criminal damage is down. Of course, if you call the police for criminal damage, everyone knows they won't turn up and you'll just get a crime number, so unless you're claiming on insurance you're probably less and less likely to report it.
We shouldn't be aiming for London (with 200 phones stolen every day as it is) to reach the level of the worst European or American cities.
The crime rates in other places is irrelevant if the city you've lived in for the last 20 years has become noticeably more dangerous.
This is not "a narrative that keeps being pushed without merit", in fact the people who dismiss such claims are often the ones who live very insulated lives.
More importantly, you can't deal with potential crime by making real arrests, because then you have to start arresting people who haven't done anything.
https://www.numbeo.com/crime/region_rankings_current.jsp?reg...
Brexit has markedly made the UK's economy weaker, there are less opportunities, the opportunities that exist outside of finance/tech are quite low paid compared to other European countries while the cost of living in London is absurdly high when compared to other major European cities. It's the perfect storm coupled with high immigration: blame immigrants for the lack of opportunities caused by a policy pushed by anti-immigration rhetoric, it will just feed into giving power to Reform which, if given power, will continue to crash the UK's economical prospects.
The ship has sailed, it will take the UK quite a while to correct course, perhaps even a generation or so... While that correction course happens British society will just keep eroding away.
EDIT: Since there is one (dead) comment on this: To reiterate: The Crime Survey surveys people and tracks the rate of crime people state in a response to a survey that they have experienced. As such it includes crimes that are not reported.
https://policinginsight.com/feature/analysis/most-crime-has-...
I've been here 25 years, and most of the areas that used to be sketchy are now not.
Given we know from comparing e.g. Crime Survey data to polls about peoples beliefs about crimes that peoples beliefs about crime rates in the UK are not remotely well correlated with actual crime rates, that page doesn't tell us what you claim it does.
It tells us that out of visitors to Numbeo, people who claim to live in 3 British cities report that they are more worried than most others.
For Bradford, the data is based on just 131 contributors in the last 5 years:
There are areas where people do drugs openly, and overdosing, too, and no one cares. A cop walked past a lady overdosing.
You should watch videos of YouTubers going to these areas if you do not want to do it yourself.
The areas are famous for tourists where most phone snatching is rampant, 18 a day at a minimum, on one famous street alone.
FWIW, I am talking about London.
People doing drugs isn’t a danger to me.
That sounds a lot like the Swedish defense, that Malmö only looks bad because the reporting standards are more rigorous. Meanwhile there are literal hand grenades exploding on their streets daily.
With 131 biased samples over 5 years, to continue with Bradford, who are not asked about actual crime, but about how they feel about it without an qualification as to whether they have any actual experience with it, this site is not saying anything useful.
Presenting it as if it is ranking cities by actual crime rates is ignorant of the data gathering at best, and at worst blatantly dishonest.
Then again given the hyperbole you're employing regarding Malmö, I should perhaps not expect you to care much about the veracity of data - yes, attacks with explosives is an escalating problem in Sweden, but nowhere remotely at the scale you're claiming.
Crimes (like phone, expensive items in a bag snatching) happen in rich areas, too.[1]
I witnessed the aftermath of a murder last week in Stoke Newington! (Saw that the road had been closed off)
I've seen women publicly urinating into drains on a busy road (Hackney)
There are massive increases in the number of homeless people (Tooting, Clapton, Shadwell), several times I've seen a homeless looking person harass women passing by.
Seen needles lying around (Shadwell, Commercial Road)
The general advice now is never to wear a watch in Central London, this wasn't the case 10 years ago.
I've seen security guards restrain people trying to leave shops in Central London after they shoplifted.
So yeah, some areas might not look sketchy, and these gentrified places (e.g. Stoke Newington) might be ok if you stick to the bars, restaurants and then Uber home, but for a lot of people these remain dangerous if you're in the wrong place at the wrong time.
I'm also not seeing any more homeless in London now than I used to see on Oxford Street when I lived by Marble Arch in 2000, for example. There were large encampments in the subways near Marble Arch at that time - I've not seen anything like it since.
> The general advice now is never to wear a watch in Central London, this wasn't the case 10 years ago.
Says who? I've never heard anyone say this, and don't know anyone who'd worry about wearing a watch in Central London.
And UK is doing fuck-all about it, they care more about who said what online. It is absurd.
As for your personal experience, sure, that is valid. It really depends on when you go out or what you are wearing.
Furthermore, violent crime throughout the entire western world (not just England and Wales) has been dropping from its peak in the mid 1990's.
Unfortunately these facts don't fit in with the Daily Mail narrative and what people want to believe.
Crime overall is at a low level historically in the England, per the Crime Survey of England and Wales, which track actual victims through surveys.
That's not to say the UK couldn't do much better, but this fearmongering is basically repeating far-right conspiracy claims pushed by the press that are not supported by data including by peoples actual responses when asked if they have actually been a victim as per the Crime Survey.
From The Guardian reporting on Crime Survey numbers for London relative to the rest:
"According the Crime Survey for England and Wales, someone is actually less likely to be a victim of crime in London than they are across the country as a whole. In the capital, 14.9% of people experienced a crime either to their person or their household in the year ending September 2023, compared with 15.7% nationally. But what about different types of crime?"
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2025/jul/26/mobile-ph...
If you do not like The Guardian, search for "central london phone snatching".
Oh FFS.
Do you seriously consider this robust evidence?
Instead, have a look at the Crime Survey for England and Wales (HINT: This tracks peoples experience of crime and so includes unreported crime)
Yes, and they are doing it, and it is a major issue in London. We are not talking about other places right now. It is a huge issue in London.
I've been here 26 years this time (and a couple of years before that) and similarly not noticed it getting noticeably more dangerous.
(on the caveat side, I am a fairly hefty white bloke who apparently "looks scary" which might explain things.)
You are free to walk around these areas (just go to Knightsbridge) with an expensive watch to see if it is true or not. Get back to us safely to report.
Also... I literally just saw a cop walk past a lady overdosing as if all is fine, and did nothing to the woman who threw a bottle at the YouTuber. Who cares if it is on YouTube or not? I saw it regardless.
Wearing a nice watch in Soho, Liverpool Street, Tower Bridge is super sketchy and you're likely to get comments about how 'brave' (stupid) you are. These are just the places I've been to, West London is meant to be much worse.
Edit: Here are some links I found
- "Machete-ban petition launched as London watch robberies rise" https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-64991862
- Statistics for stolen watches from 2018 to 2023 https://www.met.police.uk/foi-ai/metropolitan-police/disclos...
When we know that police is understaffed and can't respond to all crime, perhaps you should spend less time blindly trusting the numbers. You, too, can't build an argument on unreliable data. Just like the poster you're replying to.
This was literally pointed out in the comment you replied to.
And can't find any actual data to corroborate that robberies have somehow reached such endemic levels.
EDIT: It gets comical to see that Met stats are now somehow trustworthy after the number of people here making a big deal of distrusting them. But notably the data shows the numbers to be small - in the hundreds per month - and having dropped significantly between 2018 and 2023. Furthermore, most of these crimes are burglary or theft, rather than crimes such as robberies or violence, so the chance of having them taken off your wrist is substanlly lower.
The article then covers an increase in "high-value" watch thefts from 2021 to 2022. Between 2021 and 2022 the numbers did in fact increase, and they were lower in 2021 than in 2023 as well. But we're talking 4885 watches total (not restricted to "high value") in 2021, of which about 1/3 are robberies. So you're much less likely to have your watch taken off you than e.g. your phone stolen.
You can specifically look at people's assumption at violent crime rates charted against actual violent crime rates and see that the gap has never been wider.
Also, 1980 to 2025 is not a "very specific time frame" and it still shows the trend described above. Very large cliff in the 90s we are still nowhere near.
Additionally, being alert does not equal to living in fear.
What you're describing here reads very much as cowering in fear to me.
And this kind of fear-mongering with no relation to reality is actively harmful and part of what is seriously damaging the UK as a society.
If anything, these articles have made me feel more secure rather than less secure - these numbers are tiny given the size of London.
Sure, maybe don't go around flashing your watch if it's worth tens of thousands of pounds.
I'm guessing your solutions involve more police and anti immigration. While more social services and better prospects in life is what actually does something about the problem.
Assuming there are 9 million people in London, that means that 1/45,000 Londoners experience a phone theft on a given day.
We can then (very crudely) estimate the probability that a Londoner has their phone stolen over a ten year period:
1 - ((1-45000)/45000)^(365*10) = 0.08
I'm obviously not suggesting that the calculation above be taken too seriously. But it shows that 200 phones being stolen a day in a city of 9 million people is consistent with phone theft being a significant but not overwhelming problem.
(The adult population of London is around 7 million, and kids are obviously also victims of phone theft, so you won't get a radically different answer if you look at the population over a certain age.)
Trying to find an international version leads me to ICVS and this[0] publication which likewise ranks London at the very top. By that data, the UK ranks average at per-capita crime but is second at the same people being victimized more than once, which I take points towards that the majority of the country is likely relatively normal, but a handful of cities have very concentrated crime rates that are raising statistics.
Do you have any other sources to show or do you just like pointing out that all of them are bad if they don't agree with you?
[0] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/282573613_Criminal_...
Let this be a salutary warning to HN readers that a huge amount of baseless nonsense gets written about crime in London.
and "official figures" are an untrustworthy source of data
pray tell us just what could possibly be a trustworthy source of data??
"Go outside and look for yourself" that's people's experiences
I think you mean:
1 - ((45000-1)/45000)^(365*10) = 0.08
That's just gentrification of those areas. Others became in the process.
If you look it up, you can see these snatching, it is recorded by CCTVs.
The issue is there, they were just there at a time where these people who are snatching weren't there. 18 phone snatching per day on one street, but not at all hours, and not on all streets. It varies. But yeah, we want people's experiences. Maybe some of these people on HN did not experience it. Perhaps they could ask their friends and the friends of their friends.
Let this be a salutary warning to HN readers that people get needlessly pissy when you question them about the backgrounds of their experiences.
(And also, where on Earth did you get the idea that academics in London can afford to live in the nice districts, or that most HNers are academics?)
- According to the Office for National Statistics, many crimes recorded against people increased between the years ending June 2015 and March 2025, including violence against the person (40%), possession of offensive weapons (23%), sexual offences (75%) and theft from the person (207%).
- The number of serious offences involving a knife or sharp object recorded in the year ending March 2024 in England and Wales was 54% higher than the figure for 2016.
- More than twice as many knife crime offences were recorded in Essex in the 12 months to March 2024, than the figure for 2016.
- Greater Manchester Police has recorded 1,345 knife-enabled robberies in the past 12 months, up from 1,288 recorded between July 2023 and June 2024.
- Rape Crisis has described a "staggering" 15% rise in the number of rapes and attempted rapes recorded in Scotland last year as "alarming". Official statistics published on Tuesday, show sexual crimes increased by 3% overall to the second highest level since 1971. The figures show the number of sexual crimes reported last year was 14,892, up from 14,484 in 2023-24 - a 45% increase in the last decade. Rape and attempted rape reports increased from 2,522 in 2023-24 to 2,897 in 2024-25, up 60% for the same figures 10 years ago.
- Police in England and Wales have recorded the highest number of rapes and sexual offences in 20 years. Forces recorded 194,683 sexual offences in 2021-22, including 70,330 rapes, the highest number since records began in 2002/03. The number of sex offences recorded by forces in England and Wales has more than doubled in the past seven years, from 88,576 in 2014/15 to 194,683 in 2021-22. Rape offences have nearly doubled in the past six years, from 36,320 in 2015-16 to 70,330 in the year to March.
- Personal theft up 22% in England and Wales, ONS says. Personal thefts recorded by police in England and Wales were up 22% in 2024 from the previous year, according to official figures. Data from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) shows police recorded 152,416 thefts from the person offences last year, the highest since the current data methods began in 2003.
- It estimated that there were 9.6 million incidents of what is described as "headline crime" in 2024 - which includes theft, robbery, criminal damage, fraud, computer misuse, and violence with or without injury.
- The latest CSEW survey reported that at the end of 2024: People's experiences of theft had gone up by 13% - including a 50% rise in theft from the person offences, such as mobile phone theft. Theft from outside a dwelling - such as courier packages being taken from people's doorsteps - went up by 19% Fraud incidents, including bank and credit account fraud, were up by 33% to around 4.1 million incidents - with around 3 million incidents involving a loss and 2.1 million victims fully reimbursed in these cases
- More than 700,000 vehicles were broken into last year - often with the help of high-tech electronic devices, including so-called signal jammers, which are thought to play a part in four out of 10 vehicle thefts nationwide.
- Shoplifting hits record high in England and Wales There were 530,643 reported shoplifting offences in the year to March, a 20% increase from the previous year, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
- Pharmacies report surge in shoplifting and aggression Around nine in 10 pharmacies have reported an increase in shoplifting and aggression towards staff in the past year. A survey of 500 pharmacies by the National Pharmacy Association (NPA) also found 87% had experienced at least one instance of intimidating behaviour towards workers, while 22% said they had seen staff physically assaulted.
But homicide rate (per 100K) dropped gradually after rising for 30 years to its record high in 2003, so, yay I guess!
People's experiences are, as yet, an inaccessible source of data.
People's claims about their experiences are an often untrustworthy source of data.
> pray tell us just what could possibly be a trustworthy source of data??
The absence of an trustworthy, accessible source of data does not make untrustworthy or inaccessible sources of data trustworthy or accessible.
> "Go outside and look for yourself" that's people's experiences
No, its not "people's experiences", but its also not a broad, general, representative source of data.
It's not going to be perfect, but it gives a very solid snapshot of peoples experience with crime without the massive distortion we know we get from looking at similar sized samples asked what they think crime levels are.
So? Sample size only addresses sampling error, not nonsampling error, for nonsampling error its exactly as bad as the dinkiest little poll on the same topic (and for sampling error, it's not much better; polls are the sizes they typically are because it doesn't actually take a very large scale to be fairly reliable when you only consider sampling error, and, again, adding more size doesn't help at all against nonsampling error.)
You'll also note that the paper itself then provides data from additional capitals that it's conveniently not included in the main list. Several of those additional cities ranking above London. In other words, it's a sample that even the paper demonstrates isn't remotely comprehensive.
I don't need to provide any other sources - you're the one that made a claim that was based in "data" that was entirely worthless, and this new data still isn't even close to backing up the original claim.
Do you think this tells us anything other than perception? Which several people have already pointed out we know are out of whack with actual survey of peoples actual experience with crime?
It's clear there are many phone thefts. It's also clear people believe the extent of crime is far higher than it is. It seems like a perfect thing for a company like Curry's to profit from.
You then mention CSEW for one year, ignoring that the overall long term trend is down from a high in 1994-95.
CSEW consistently captures a far higher rate of crime than police reports because it doesn't rely on police reporting changes, or peoples willingness to report.
In other words: Your wall of text is irrelevant.
Look at the CSEW data, and the trends all the way back to its start in 1982.
Doesn't mean there aren't problems, and hotspots, or specific crimes that have different trends, but overall we're near a historical low.
That was what, N = 4?
So are you saying what I posted has no merit?
> According to the Crime Survey for England and Wales 2024, an estimated 78,000 people had phones or bags snatched from them on the street in the year ending March 2024.[1]
> This is equivalent to 200 'snatch thefts' a day and is a 153% increase on the number of incidents in the year ending March 2023. London is regarded as the “epicentre” of phone thefts with £50 million worth of phones reported stolen in London in 2024.[1]
This is coming from your own Government, for crying out loud.
And 1-10 people saying "oh it's perfectly safe" does not mean anything. It is an actual issue, and you may not believe me until it happens to you, or someone you know, which is kind of typical, so I get it.
[1] https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-...
If they’re not willing to listen to actual Londoners then the discussion is unlikely to be productive.
But we all know you’ll double down because you aren’t interested in any truth that goes against your narrative, prove me wrong.
And I consumed many people's "unsafe" experiences, similar to YOUR "safe" experiences.
As I said, N = ~4 saying "it's safe" means fuck all, just like N = ~4 saying the opposite.
So... you appear to be another person who invalidates and completely disregards other people's experiences (and your own Government's publishing) in favor of yours, because somehow yours is more valid. It is not.
You need to stop painting London as a safe place, because that it is not. Maybe it is on the routes you take in your car, but in general, no, not really. Hell, even Budapest is safer than London.
> Hungary's national crime rate in 2021 was approximately 0.77 crimes per 100 residents. This figure represents a significant decline from 0.82 in 2020, indicating a 5.86% decrease . Specific data for Budapest is limited, but the city's overall crime index is reported at 33.99 out of 100, which is considered low.[1]
> In contrast, London's crime rate is significantly higher. The annual crime rate in the London region is approximately 30.1 crimes per 1,000 people, which is about 86% of the national average for England and Wales . Violent crime constitutes 22.6% of all reported crimes in London . Notably, Westminster, a central borough in London, recorded a staggering 432.3 crimes per 1,000 residents, largely due to its high daytime population from tourism.[2]
So, by the available numbers, Budapest has about 0.77 crimes per 100 people, while London has 3.01 per 100. That makes London's crime rate ~3.9x higher, meaning Budapest is roughly 74% safer per capita.
[1] https://diaklakas.hu/en/blog/public-safety-budapest/
[2] https://www.plumplot.co.uk/London-violent-crime-statistics.h...
There are safer cities than London and there are more dangerous ones. London is pretty middle of the pack, if you look at European or American cities of comparable size. Even the stats that you yourself link to show that London is one of the safer parts of the UK.
> using their own anecdotal experiences over data in order to confirm your own pre conceived notions
I am not doing this, at all, in fact, you are dead wrong. You think I am not aware of any of these fallacies / biases? I am self-aware enough.
Address this, tired of repeating myself: >>44905149 .
> I consumed https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/cdp-...
Official sources.
> And I consumed many people's "unsafe" experiences, similar to YOUR "safe" experiences.
I am considering both sides here.
> As I said, N = ~4 saying "it's safe" means fuck all, just like N = ~4 saying the opposite.
This should alone should strengthen the claim that I am considering both sides, and it means jack shit.
> So... you appear to be another person who invalidates and completely disregards other people's experiences (and your own Government's publishing) in favor of yours, because somehow yours is more valid. It is not.
---
Next time please do it without any personal attacks, that does not favor your case (wait, do you actually have any?) that is already standing on weak legs. If you have no case apart from personal attacks, then yeah, I am in the wrong here, with regarding to you.
If you are not interested in actually doing your research, do not even bother, I am tired of the old story that "but muh experiences matter more!!11!". They DO NOT. Your experiences are not the universal truth, and it goes both ways.
https://www.onlondon.co.uk/dave-hill-lets-get-the-london-kni...
(Note that the identification of Westminster as a knife-crime hotspot in the second chart is misleading, as this is an area of central London with lots of tourists and workers, thus inflating the number of crimes per the relatively small number of residents.)
Knife crime is a serious problem, but it’s not something that I worry about at all in my day to day life in London. It would be no more rational for me to do so (in fact, less rational) than it would be for a New Yorker to worry about being shot.
What I still don’t understand about this thread is why someone who doesn’t live in London has repeatedly being telling people who do live in London to “go out and see for themselves”. You seem very attached to a narrative about London found in certain sections of right wing online media, and unless you’re not telling us something, this can’t be because you have any personal interest in life in London. I feel like there’s some kind of agenda here, but I don’t care to speculate exactly what it is.
People can reasonably interpret crime statistics differently based on their personal experiences and risk tolerance. Your experience feeling safe in London is valid, just as the experiences of those who feel unsafe are valid. The data I cited simply provides broader context beyond individual anecdotes.
Crime statistics are publicly available precisely so they can inform public discussion, regardless of who's discussing them. If you think the sources I cited are inaccurate or the comparison is flawed, I'm happy to discuss that.
This is consistent with my personal experience and that of others who've posted here. You have not posted any data indicating otherwise.
>the discussion should be about whether those numbers are accurate and what they show, not about where I live or my motivation
You must understand that if you dismissively tell people to "go out and see for yourself", and then it turns out that you don't even live in London, people are going to wonder how you ended up holding such strong opinions on crime in London.
People are actually reporting knife crime and rapes and burglaries and shop lifting to the police in record numbers, but the CSEW survey doesn't reflect this, so all is fine!
After all what's more trustworthy? Some bureucrats asking census-like questions to some sample of the population to cook some numbers, or actual women reporting rape and victims reporting knife crimes to the police?
> In other words: Your wall of text is irrelevant
Live happily in your alternate reality.
False. I have. See below.
> The Crime Survey data shows that crime in London, and the rest of the UK, has generally decreased over the past ten years
Your own source contradicts your claim.
The latest ONS "Crime in England and Wales: year ending March 2025" bulletin-the most recent data available shows headline crime rose to 9.4 million incidents, a 7% increase from the previous year (8.8 million). This is the opposite of the decrease you're claiming.
---
The crimes affecting daily safety have surged:
- Fraud: +31% (4.2 million incidents-highest since records began in 2017)
- Shoplifting: +20% (530,643 offences-highest since 2003)
- Theft from person: +15% (151,220 offences-also record highs)
---
You're conflating timeframes.
Yes, the 10-year trend shows overall decreases, but the ONS explicitly states there have been "increases across some crime types in the latest reporting period." The current trend shows London getting less safe, not more.
These aren't abstract statistics - fraud, shoplifting, and theft from the person are exactly the crimes that make London feel unsafe day-to-day. While homicides (-6%) fell slightly, that's a low-volume crime compared to millions of property offences hitting residents.
---
So... your own data source proves crime is rising in the categories that matter most for everyday safety.
---
PS. with regarding to:
> and then it turns out that you don't even live in London, people are going to wonder how you ended up holding such strong opinions on crime in London.
We have the internet. I can communicate with Londoners, visit regularly, read local London news sources, follow Metropolitan Police crime statistics, and so forth. The list is quite long.
By your logic, crime researchers, policy analysts, journalists, and statisticians could only study cities where they personally reside.
Your attempt to dismiss the data by questioning my location rather than addressing the statistics themselves suggests you're more interested in ad hominem attacks than substantive discussion.
You'll find this note about the increase in 'headline crime' in 2025 vs 2024:
>the latest rise in CSEW headline crime was because of a 31% increase in fraud (to around 4.2 million incidents); this is the highest estimated number of incidents since fraud was first collected on the CSEW in YE March 2017
Surely you can't argue that fraud makes people feel unsafe when walking the streets. Fraud is a serious problem and the increase in fraud is concerning, but it's not a personal safety issue.
If you think about it, there are a lot of different categories of crime, numbers are bound to fluctuate, and so some of the categories will naturally show increases between one year and the next (just as others will show decreases). You can easily cherry pick one or two individual categories to paint whatever picture you want. I could equally point out that knife offenses, firearm offenses and robbery have gone down compared to 2024. Really, as many posters have pointed out, it makes more sense to look at longer-term trends rather than reading too much into year-on-year increases or decreases in specific crime categories.
The overall picture is that London is neither unusually safe nor unusually unsafe for a large European or American city. This has been the case for decades.
>I can communicate with Londoners
Well, can you? You're communicating with one now, but you seem quite determined to convince me not to believe either the official statistics or my own experiences.
Let's remove fraud entirely since you're right it doesn't affect street safety.
Theft from the person - which absolutely does - increased 15% to 151,220 offences (highest since records began).
Shoplifting hit 530,643 offences (also highest since records began). These are the crimes people encounter walking around London.
Since you're a Londoner, the Met data is key: London saw a 54% shoplifting increase vs 20% nationally, and 41% increase in theft from person while the rest of England saw it decrease by 14%. London isn't following national patterns - it's bucking them badly.
On cherry-picking: Homicides fell by 32 incidents across 9 million Londoners. Meanwhile, London alone saw over 30,000 additional shoplifting incidents. The volume difference matters.
The ONS explicitly states there have been "increases across some crime types in the latest reporting period." The current trajectory on street-level property crime is objectively concerning, regardless of longer-term trends.
Your personal experience is valid, but the data suggests it may not reflect what's happening across London more broadly. The statistics and your lived experience can both be true simultaneously.
---
Just to reiterate: these aren't abstract statistics - fraud, shoplifting, and theft from the person are exactly the crimes that make London feel unsafe day-to-day. Your own data source proves crime is rising in the categories that matter most for everyday safety.
"I hunt phone thieves professionally – I was still targeted on Oxford Street Former detective turned private investigator warns some London areas have become ‘lawless’" https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2025/08/15/phone-thieves-ox...
"Some 78,000 people had phones or bags snatched from them on the street in the year ending March 2024, according to the Crime Survey for England and Wales.
That is equivalent to 200 “snatch thefts” a day and is a 153 per cent increase on the number of incidents in the year ending March 2023.
London is seen as the “epicentre” of phone thefts with £50 million worth of handsets reported stolen in the capital in 2024.
In a blitz on the “scourge of mobile phone theft” in February, Met officers arrested 230 people in just a week and recovered 1,000 handsets by targeting hotspots such as Westminster and the West End."