Met police chief calls for law to make stolen phones ‘unusable bricks’
London is widely regarded as the phone-snatching capital of Europe, with between 200 and 300 devices stolen each day. Photograph: Jeffrey Blackler/AlamyView image in fullscreenLondon is widely regarded as the phone-snatching capital of Europe, with between 200 and 300 devices stolen each day. The city accounts for up to three-quarters of all mobile phone thefts in England and Wales.Apple has already rolled out an update for iPhones, meaning those with the latest operating system have extra safeguards if the devices are stolen.
- ▪London is widely regarded as the phone-snatching capital of Europe, with between 200 and 300 devices stolen each day.
- ▪Photograph: Jeffrey Blackler/AlamyView image in fullscreenLondon is widely regarded as the phone-snatching capital of Europe, with between 200 and 300 devices stolen each day.
- ▪The city accounts for up to three-quarters of all mobile phone thefts in England and Wales.Apple has already rolled out an update for iPhones, meaning those with the latest operating system have extra safeguards if the devices are stolen.
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| Original publisher | the Guardian |
| Canonical URL | https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2026/jun/11/met-police-chief-law-make-stolen-phones-unusable-bricks |
| Publication time | Thu, 11 Jun 2026 08:00:09 GMT |
| Retrieval time | 2026-06-11T08:41:45.024Z |
| Last seen | 2026-06-11T08:41:45.024Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | 5ueO_0gKpvpU · 2 stories |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
London is widely regarded as the phone-snatching capital of Europe, with between 200 and 300 devices stolen each day. Photograph: Jeffrey Blackler/AlamyView image in fullscreenLondon is widely regarded as the phone-snatching capital of Europe, with between 200 and 300 devices stolen each day. Photograph: Jeffrey Blackler/AlamyMetropolitan policeMet police chief calls for law to make stolen phones ‘unusable bricks’Home secretary also urged to force tech firms into sharing data on stolen devices and if they are reactivatedHelena HortonThu 11 Jun 2026 04.00 EDTLast modified on Thu 11 Jun 2026 04.01 EDTSharePrefer the Guardian on GoogleThe Metropolitan police commissioner, Sir Mark Rowley, has asked the home secretary, Shabana Mahmood, to force all phone companies to make stolen devices…
Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at the Guardian.
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