Apple Now Working With the NYPD To Curb iPhone Thefts

An anonymous reader writes "Back in late 2012, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg attributed the increase in statistical city-wide crime to Apple, noting that thieves had a propensity to target folks using iPhones and iPads. As an illustration of the problem, there were 3,890 more Apple product thefts than in 2012 than there were in 2011. At the time, Mayor Bloomberg's press secretary Marc La Vorgna explained that 'if you just took away the jump in Apple', crime in New York City would have been down year over year. Indeed, the number of major crimes reported in 2011 in NYC came in at 104,948 compared to 108.432 in 2012. If you exclude Apple related thefts from the figures, then the crime rate in 2012 is essentially the same as it was in 2011. In light of that, a new report from the New York Post details that Apple is now working with the NYPD in an effort to curb iPhone and other Apple related thefts."

Comments

How about bricking them?

[MarchHare]

Why not simply brick any device reported stolen? I understand it's done in other countries (or for other devices).

Re:How about bricking them?

[jackb_guppy]

Why brick them? Just making using them useless. Every connection to network: WiFi or Cell, just opens a FaceTime connection, so the police can direct comunate with the current holder. So clean records.

Re:How about bricking them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Correct. Why is this such a difficult concept in the US? I use an unlocked iPhone in Australia. If it is stolen I promptly contact my telco, identify myself and they permanently deny that phone access to any network in my country. I buy a newer model phone and the dick who took my phone has a paperweight. I claim the loss on my home insurance and pay the insurance excess of a few hundred dollars and no market is created for stolen iPhones.

Re:How about bricking them?

[tompaulco]

Someone files a false police report and someone's phone is bricked
Then the police department and the wireless service provider are both at fault for not verifying your identity and your ownership of the phone.

Re:How about bricking them?

[DJRumpy]

Actually your slant is misdirected. It's the cell providers who would brick a phone, and they can do so easily but have resisted calls to do so until recent pressure from certain congressmen and law enforcement brought the issue to a boiling point. It has nothing to do with 'Apple', other than the fact that those phones havea high market value, but rather there was nothing preventing a criminal from activating a known stolen phone on a providers network.

The simple fact is, that cell providers will happily continue to allow criminals to use your stolen phone, even knowing that it's stolen, because it's a source of revenue.

http://blog.chron.com/techblog/2012/11/finally-wireless-carriers-collaborating-on-stolen-cellphone-database/

PR is the death of rationality

[kruach aum]

If you only took away the amount of weight I gained from eating deep fried pizzas every meal, I actually lost weight last year!

Re:PR is the death of rationality

[icebike]

Chuckle.

I thought the same thing when I read the summary. In one breath they are talking about Major crimes, and in the next sentence they lump in iphone theft in that group. Yet if you report an iPhone theft the police won't do a damn thing about it other than give you some paper to fill out. How is that considered a Major Crime?

Nothing will work

[boristdog]

Apple's consumers tend to want to show off the fact that they are Apple consumers. Even their phone & tablet covers have a hole to show off the logo.

My mother taught me not to flash around my valuables, but I doubt you can convince most folks to do this.

Pass the blame

[Sepultura]

This is a ridiculous supposition. Are we suppose to believe that the criminals responsible for these thefts were lured into stealing by the flashy Apple gizmos? Or that these criminals would reject crime and find honest work if only New York could rid itself of Apple products?

This is just another example of politicians passing the blame to something else. In this case it's Apple, as blaming Apple for life's ills is in vogue at the moment.

Bullshit analysis

[Anonymous Coward]

The vast majority of car thefts now involve fuel injection cars. If you don't count those, the crime rate would be down!

Make no mistake, we, the police department, are doing a GREAT job. It's your damn newfangled fuel injection systems that are the problem!

Password to power off

[NoKaOi]

How about just making it require a password to power off, put it in airplane mode, or disable Find My iPhone so you can use find my phone? As it is you can still turn the phone off even if the lock screen is passworded. I don't want to have to enter a PIN every time I unlock my phone, but I also don't want a thief to be able to disable Find My iPhone (such as by turning it off), and I wouldn't mind entering a password on the rare occasions I turn the phone off or put it in airplane mode. Do any Android phones have a feature like that?

I think most thieves know to turn off an iPhone that they've stolen.

Re:The NYPD has too much fucking money

[Elbereth]

I don't think you understand how politics and police in a big city work.

There's the police force that the poor get, the police force that the middle class get, and the police force that the rich get. Generally, when cops come into poor neighborhoods, it's to bash heads. In middle class neighborhoods, you get sympathetic cops who politely explain that they're too busy to investigate your report. In the rich neighborhoods, they drop everything in order to find your missing poodle.