London became a global hub for mobile phone theft

London: Sirens screamed as police vans pulled into a north London street, and shocked passers-by paused to watch as officers charged into three secondhand phone shops.

“Do you have a safe on your premises, sir?” one officer asked a shopkeeper, who was sitting next to his computer and a half-drunk cup of tea.

The man watched as they combed through phones, cash and documents from two safes. The raid, which The New York Times was invited to observe, was one of dozens carried out across the capital last month, part of a belated, highly visible effort by London’s Metropolitan Police to tackle the phone-theft problem that has plagued the city in recent years.

A thief steals a mobile phone from a man walking down a London street. Credit: City of London Police

The scale of the crime has