The head of Britain’s biggest police force has urged phone companies to turn stolen devices into ‘unusable bricks’ so they are less attractive to snatching gangs.

Sir Mark Rowley told the International Mobile Phone Crime Conference in central London ‘there would be no criminal market’ for handsets if telecoms giants did more to make them worthless after being taken.

The Met Police Commissioner said phone thefts are a ‘significant’ problem for the force, which has some of the highest rates of robbery and theft from the person in England and Wales.

He warned the Met will call on the Home Secretary to change laws to force phone companies to take action if necessary, and will encourage international law enforcement to do the same.

Sir Mark said: ‘Phone manufacturing software companies have invested massively in preventing access to your data.

‘It’s an escalating war with fraudsters and cyber criminals, but they’ve been successful enough to allow us to run our lives, including our finances, on our phones.

‘Whilst they’ve worked hard on the financial and data security of our phones, they spend far less attention on the physical safety of their customers who walk through cities with a £1,000 or £2,000 device held loosely in their hands.

‘If a stolen phone were to become an unusable brick and the parts were not recyclable, there would be no criminal market.’

He added: ‘I do not understand why tech companies leave their clients at risk despite two or three years of discussions.

‘Until this device is worthless, the market will remain attractive to organised crime.’

In the UK, the Met has seen adverts on Snapchat offering children as much as £380 to steal a single iPhone, with a bonus of £100 for stealing 10.

Sir Mark said: ‘The exploitation of children in this trade is not just about individual offences.

‘It’s an entry point into organised crime.

‘Children recruited to snatch phones for quick cash are being groomed into criminal networks, normalised into offending behaviour and pushed further into exploitation.

‘What begins as one device on a street corner becomes a pathway into debt, coercion, violence and deeper criminality.’

The Met wants anti-theft protection switched on by default, stolen phones to be rendered unusable, and better access to IMEI (International Mobile Equipment Identity) data to make it easier to return devices to their owners.

Figures released under Freedom of Information legislation show only a fraction of devices taken in London are returned to their owners.

Between 2017 and February 27, 2024, a total 587,498 phones were stolen in London excluding the City, 13,998 of which were recovered, and 573,500 were not.

Separate figures available on the Met’s crime data website show that in 2023 there were 52,820 thefts from the person where a phone was taken, and 14,326 robberies; the figures for 2024 were 70,249 thefts and 11,125 robberies; and for 2025 61,292 thefts and 10,207 robberies.

In the space of the month to mid-February, the Met arrested 248 people over phone theft and recovered around 770 stolen handsets.

The force is using high-powered e-bikes and drones as part of its operations to stop phone theft.

But in a report for the London Policing Board, Sir Mark warned the Met remains ‘an outlier’ for the number of personal robberies per thousand people, and theft from the person.

The force also solves one of the smallest proportion of these offences compared with others in England and Wales.

In the year to the end of December 2025, 6.9% of personal robbery cases ended with a suspect being identified and dealt with, while the rate was 0.9% for theft from the person.

In Westminster, between 69% and 72% of thefts from the person and personal robberies each week involve phones.

Get in touch with our news team by emailing us at webnews@metro.co.uk.

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