Attorney General Summit to Combat iPhone Theft

This article was written by Matthew Hampton and Will Yakowicz.

For several years, police in major metropolitan areas across the city have noticed an increase in smartphone thefts — particularly in transit systems.

The phenomenon, known as "Apple-picking" for the manufacturer of the highly sought-after iPhone, has become such an epidemic that Attorney General Eric Schneiderman is teaming up with the San Francisco District Attorney in an attempt to stem the rising tide of theft.
The two men will come together with representatives from companies like Apple, Samsung, Microsoft and Google to try and find 21st Century solutions to the age-old snatch-and-grab.

"Unlike other types of crimes, smartphone theft can be eradicated with a simple technological solution," said San Francisco D.A. George Gascon. "With 1.6 million Americans falling victim to smartphone theft in 2012, this has become a national epidemic."

Schneiderman agreed. 

"It’s time for manufacturers to be as innovative in solving this problem as they have been in designing devices that have reshaped how we live," he said. 

The forum will take place at the attorney general's New York City office starting on June 13, with Gascon and Schneiderman urging the companies to come up with ways to render stolen devices inoperable forever — making their theft pointless.

Already, NYPD officers have recorded dozens of examples of stolen iPhones being relocated thanks to GPS trackers embedded within the devices themselves. 

Hopefully, Schneiderman said, the companies that have created such revolutionary devices will come up with an equally revolutionary method of protecting them. 
iPhone theft is almost a weekly occurrence in Park Slope.
Two crooks snatched a woman’s iPhone out of her hands while riding the G train at Fourth Ave.-Ninth Street subway station Sunday, April 28.
About a month later, police released a photo of the crook who actually snatched the Apple product from the victim's hand, described as a black woman standing between 5-foot-6 and 5-foot-8 with long braided hair under a green baseball cap. She was last seen wearing blue jeans, dark colored sweatshirt and black sneakers.
More recently, a 44-year-old victim told police that she was walking between Fifth and Sixth avenues on Berkeley Place at 5:20 p.m. when a crook, described as an 18-year-old black man, ran up and grabbed her white iPhone out of her hands and ran west on Berkeley.

One particularly violent iPhone snatch occurred on April 30, when a mugger punched a woman in the head and stole her iPhone on Warren Street and Fourth Avenue, police said.

According to the police report, the 28-year-old victim said that she was walking along Warren Street and came to the southwest corner of Fourth Avenue at 8:20 a.m. when a black man ran up from behind, punched her in the back of the head. The crook, described as a 20-year-old black man standing 5-foot-10, weighing 160 lbs. with a shaved head, then snatched her iPhone out of her hands and ran away.