The proliferation of smart phones worth hundreds of pounds has been seized on by criminals, who see pedestrians as a soft target, according to a report in the Guardian .
In the London Borough of Islington, there has been an increase of over 400% in phone snatches in the space of a year.
Across the UK, between 250,000 and 300,000 are reported stolen each year.
Detective inspector Karen Gilmour head of the robbery unit at Islington told the Guardian:
“These young kids know what you’ve got. It seems to me they can make an assessment very quickly as to whether the person they’re looking at has got the sort of phone they want. It mostly happens in daylight hours, but it does spill over to the evening as well.”
