More than 700 people were arrested and hundreds of suspected stolen mobile phones were recovered during a month-long crackdown on robbery and theft across London, the Metropolitan Police has revealed.
The force made 711 arrests throughout September while targeting phone snatching, robbery and the handling of stolen goods, as Scotland Yard steps up efforts to tackle crimes that most affect Londoners. The Standard accompanied the Met on an operation in central London.
Seizures and arrests
The month-long crackdown also led to the seizure of drugs, weapons, cash and more than 110 illegally modified e-bikes, which are frequently used by thieves carrying out snatch thefts on the capital's streets.
Among those arrested was a 21-year-old suspect who allegedly tried to evade police by fleeing on an e-bike before jumping into a pond, where he was eventually detained by officers.
Focus on hotspots and organised crime
The figures emerge as the Met faces continuing pressure to curb phone thefts and street robberies, particularly in central London boroughs, where organised gangs on e-bikes and scooters have been blamed for a surge in incidents in recent years.
Police said hundreds of suspected stolen phones were recovered during the month of action, allowing investigators to return devices to victims and pursue criminal networks involved in the theft and resale of mobile phones. The force said officers carried out targeted operations across the capital, focusing on robbery hotspots and areas where theft from the person remains a persistent problem.
Detectives are also continuing to target handlers and organised criminals who profit from the trade in stolen devices, alongside frontline efforts to catch offenders responsible for snatch thefts.
Priority and statistics
The Met has made tackling robbery and phone theft a key priority, with senior officers arguing that reducing the offences is critical to improving public confidence and making Londoners feel safer on the streets.
Earlier this year Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley pushed phone companies to make stolen handsets “unusable bricks”, as the force revealed it had seen adverts on Snapchat offering children as much as £380 to steal a single iPhone, with a bonus of £100 for stealing 10.
The international trade in stolen phones is worth millions of dollars, with a device stolen in London worth more in countries like China because it has none of the government restrictions put in place by authorities there.
On Thursday the Met said that 3,963 phone theft and robbery offences were recorded in August this year, compared with 3,311 in August 2022.
Criminals are increasingly using social engineering to get into phones, the force warned, by posing as known businesses and contacting victims on other devices in a bid to get passwords and account details.
The force said that phone theft and robbery fell from 81,439 offences in 2024 to 71,867 in 2025, and that between January and August this year, there were 39,793 offences, down from 49,136 in the same period last year.
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.
According to figures for the year to the end of December 2025, the force also solved one of the smallest proportion of these offences compared with others in England and Wales. In that year, 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.
