ROBBERS and burglars are running riot in an ‘unsolved crimewave’ , making as much as £15,000 a month from stolen goods like mobile phones, a new documentary claims.
Channel 4’s Dispatches has identified 167 spots across England and Wales where police have failed to identify a single suspect in neighbourhood crimes such as vehicle crime, phone and bike thefts over the last three years.
Shameless crooks appear on camera in the show, bragging they “don’t give a f*** about what the police are doing” and explaining how they flog electrical goods abroad for easy cash.
They explain they can make between £12,000-15,000 a month selling and shipping stolen phones to China, where they are sold to be stripped for parts or unlocked for resale, with the illegal trade worth a reported £50million a year.
Research group Crest Advisory used police data for crimes including theft, vehicle incidents, and robbery, to map out the hotspots across England and Wales – where not a single crime had been solved between 2021 and 2023.
Damningly, all bar one were under the Metropolitan Police’s jurisdiction.
The show also identified further crime ‘blackspots’, including Westfield shopping centre in East London and Cambridge train station, where thieves can act with practical impunity thanks to shockingly low conviction rates.
Reporter Isobel Yeung told The Sun: “The rate at which these crimes are going unsolved in our own backyards is shocking.
“In Oxford Circus 99 per cent of the crimes go unsolved, which makes people feel validated for not speaking to police when things happen.
“One of the people I met didn’t seem to care at all who he robbed. In fact, for him, the more vulnerable the better because they wouldn’t fight back.
“As figures show, he’s not really risking anything either because the police won’t come after him.
“The people who take the phone know what they are after, that newer models are worth more.
“I actually had a friend who had her phone snatched, and then it was thrown back in her face because it wasn’t the latest iPhone, so to them, it wasn’t worth anything.”
In the documentary, brazen thieves boast they’ll never fall foul of the law, with one bragging: “I don’t give a f*** about what the police are doing, innit. I don’t care.
“I ain’t been nicked for it, yeah? And I ain’t going to get nicked. That’s how I look at it.”
The phone snatcher, who refused to be known or show his face, said: “Do you think they’re going to get a helicopter out for a phone?”
The crook claimed he grabs between three and five phones a day, which he then sells on to a pal so they can be sent abroad.
Yobs whizzing past on e-scooters, bikes and mopeds before snatching phones from unsuspecting pedestrians has become a common sight across the UK.
The serial thief outlines his ideal victims, explaining: “The more vulnerable the victim, the easier they are. Someone not paying no attention.
“How many times do you see someone on their phone walk into the street and nearly get run over? Them sort of silly people. But instead of getting run over, I’m going to slap it out your hand.”
On the day he met Isobel, he’d managed to take four Google Pixel phones from businessmen and told how some “heroes” who tried to stop him got “hit in the face with a lump of metal”.
He defended his actions, claiming he was protecting his own liberty.
When confronted with the trauma it causes to the victims, he replies: “That’s a them problem”.
The documentary reports that around Oxford Street and Regent Street in central London over the last three years, 10,000 thefts from a person were recorded and 99 per cent of them remain unsolved.
His Majesty’s Chief Inspector of Constabulary Andy Cooke, who presides over police forces in England and Wales, told Dispatches: “The Metropolitan Police, over the last couple of years, have seen unprecedented demand, there is no doubt about that.
“However, too often the police aren’t getting the basics right. Seeing so many neighbourhoods that have got zero per cent detection rates for some of these crimes, it’s not acceptable.
“If the chances of being caught are so low, that is not a deterrent.”
Presenter Isobel tells The Sun that far from being opportunistic ‘lone wolves’, even low-level thieves like phone snatchers are often part of a sprawling international network.
She explains: “Looking into what happens to these phones, it became clear that it was a more organised effort than I expected.”
Many of the phones snatched on the street make their way to Shenzhen in China. Once there, they are sold on.
Isobel explained: “I’ve been to this area of China, and it’s a tech market which specialises in electrical components of phones and other things.
Startling crime figures lay bare the anarchic crime wave blighting the nation’s high streets.
Police recorded 339,206 shoplifting incidents in the 12 months to March, yet the British Retail Consortium estimates the total number of retail thefts to be close to eight million.
Just 48,218 shoplifting cases recorded by the police, a derisory 14 per cent, resulted in a charge.
And 183,450 investigations — 54 per cent — were closed without a suspect being identified.
The BRC say retail theft rose by 26 per cent in England and Wales last year.
“So these phones are broken down for parts and sold there. Often you can’t unlock them, so this is the way to make money from it.
A middleman, responsible for buying the phones off thieves and then shipping them to China, claims to make up to £15,000 a month.
He tells Isobel: “Cheap phones each, I can make £100 to £150. If a good phone like iPhone 15 pro max, I can earn £250. Maybe £12,000 to £15,000 per month.”
The man claims to send around 100 phones each month to Shenzen via a Chinese delivery service.
He then adds: “I’ve never been contacted by police.”
How many times do you see someone on their phone walk into the street and nearly get run over? Instead of getting run over, I’m going to slap it out your hand
Phone thief
He claims that no one who had sold him phones had been contacted by the cops, either, making it feel relatively safe.
The man, who didn’t give his name or show his face, is a Chinese national living in the UK.
Victim Imran Kanji had his phone stolen while near his home in London.
He told Dispatches: “The police said that they weren’t able to progress because they didn’t have any leads, there were no suspects and there was no CCTV that they could look at.
“So they closed the case and about two weeks later, my phone pings again, and it’s in China.”
Dispatches also investigated other neighbourhood crime blackspots where no – or very few – cases were being solved.
Each of the hotspots mapped out in the research had at least 50 unsolved crimes in the last three years.
In Cambridge, police are alleged to not bother investigating bike thefts, even when they take place under CCTV cameras.
One disgruntled victim told Isobel: “We’re just expected to live with it.”
In the university city, Dispatches identified a particular 250-metre area around the train station where over 300 bike thefts had been left unsolved over the last three years.
To see just how long it takes for the bikes to be stolen, the documentary team left one out.
Each police force talks a lot about what they’re doing to combat crime. But when you actually see the data, it’s a very stark picture
Isobel Yeung
It took under 48 hours for it to be nabbed by a group of thieves – who were the second criminals to try and take it.
They broke the lock at just after 10pm and ride away on their stolen mount.
It is then transported to nearby Saffron Walden, Essex, where it is listed as being for sale, before Isobel confronts the seller.
The thief initially tells her a fake backstory, claiming: “Lovely bike, basically brand new. My mum only used it, I think twice for a bike ride.”
But when she tells him it is her bike, and that it has been stolen from Cambridge, the seller appears remorseful and claims he has no knowledge.
He returns the bike, but two weeks later is caught out on social media selling on yet another stolen cycle.
The team note that two of the three trackers placed on the bike have been ripped off – suggesting the thieves are well practised.
Isobel said: “I think he was surprised when we told him it was stolen, he clearly wasn’t expecting it.
“If you’re buying a bike for £100 when it’s worth £1,000, you know something doesn’t quite add up. You can also check on the registry that it belongs to who you are buying it off.
Each of the neighbourhoods struggling with crime were identified using the “lower layer super output areas” known as LSOAs.
Each of these areas are made up of four or five groups of output areas which normally have been 400 and 1,200 households in them.
LSOAs are used to track results in the census as well and were created in 2011.
Dispatches and Crest Advisory found 166 LSOAs that had no neighbourhood crimes solved between January 2021 and December 2023.
They identified the following areas as have one or more of these neighbourhoods – as indicated in brackets.
Barking and Dagenham (2)
Barnet (20)
Bexley (5)
Brent (5)
Bromley (14)
Camden (3)
Croydon (6)
Ealing (6)
Enfield (1)
Greenwich (6)
Hackney (1)
Hammersmith and Fulham (3)
Haringey (4)
Harrow (9)
Havering (8)
Hillingdon (9)
Hounslow (1)
Islington (1)
Kingston upon Thames (3)
Lambeth (7)
Lewisham (5)
Merton (6)
Newham (1)
Redbridge (10)
Richmond upon Thames (10)
Southwark (5)
Sutton (7)
Tower Hamlets (1)
Waltham Forest (3)
Wandsworth (6)
Westminster (1)
“It’s a pretty bold thing to do and despite being remorseful to us, he was still doing it a few weeks later. Clearly not being that careful still.”
Cambridge Police told the documentary that they had set up a specialist task force to deal with bike crime in 2020 and that they took the thefts seriously.
In Thurrock, Essex, vehicle crime has the highest unsolved rate, with 1,017 crimes on motors between January 2021 and December 2023.
Of the crimes reported, 93 per cent haven’t been solved, and a suspect hasn’t been identified.
It averages out to around six unsolved vehicle crimes each week.
The crimes include theft from vehicles, damage to them, and the vehicle being stolen.
Essex police told the documentary that vehicle crime in Thurrock was falling and that they used specialist officers to tackle it, like they do with organised crime.
Up in Leeds, an area around Wood Lane in Rothwell had seen 56 unsolved burglaries in just three years.
West Yorkshire Police told the programme that they were committed to attending all home burglaries and had invested in projects to bring the rates down.
Summing up the investigation, Isobel said: “Each police force talks a lot about what they’re doing to combat crime.
“But when you actually see the data, it’s a very stark picture.
“Especially as the Met Police really do seem to be failing on so many of those crimes and so many of those areas.
“It doesn’t look great for the police.”
Britain’s Unsolved Crimewave: Dispatches airs tonight on Channel 4 at 10pm
