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London is in the midst of the worst phone theft epidemic in Europe. We go on patrol with the elite police unit cracking down on this virulent strain of organised crime

- ANTHONY FRANCE

Kirsty Haywood’s iPhone 11 became just another statistic at 11.30 pm on the day a hooded figure grabbed it outside Waterloo station. “I was just sending a text. There was this sensation of it suddenly being taken out of my hand,” she remembers. “All I saw was the back of him. He’s got his hood up and is jogging across the road with my phone and that was it.”

Haywood, 25, found the experience understandably frightening. “I’m a small woman and he’s a man. You don’t know if they’re armed or have some other weapon if you try to get it back.” The sense of violation only grew from there. Once a friend managed to book an Uber so she could get home to Sheen and cancel her debit and credit cards, it became apparent the thief had reset her Apple ID and disabled access to Find My Phone.

“The most terrifying thing was my device was now open to use and snoop, I didn’t know what they are doing,” she says. Haywood works at an advertising brand agency, and all her work details were on her device. “It’s so invasive and alien to think a complete stranger is on your work email and Microsoft Teams,” she says. “When I finally spoke to a friend in Australia, she said she’d sent me a Snapchat message at 4am and it had been opened. It’s a scary thought — they were roaming freely around my phone.”

While Haywood reported the theft to the police, nothing ever came of it. “I got the crime reference number and admitted defeat,” she says. “It’s surprising how little is being done and feels like a rite of passage if you live in London at the moment.”

If you’re a Londoner reading this, there’s a high chance that you or someone you know has had your phone snatched. One is now stolen in the capital every six minutes (around 64,000 devices annually), with the Government (finally) sounding the alarm over a 150 per cent increase in this criminal activity.