Jessica Ure London Investigations
Volunteers at a community garden in central London have been reuniting phone theft victims with their stolen devices after finding them buried in flower-beds.
The Phoenix Garden, off Shaftesbury Avenue in Covent Garden, has seen snatchers stash stolen phones in its grounds due to its proximity to the West End, in an issue first reported by London Centric.
Garden volunteers said they collected the phones from bushes and flower-beds and handed them to their owners or the police. As a result, fewer devices have been unearthed in recent weeks.
Louise Gates, Phoenix Garden manager, said she often found phones “thrown over the fence from the night before” when she unlocked the garden in the morning.
“Some of our volunteers have dug up phones wrapped in tin foil,” Ms Gates added.
Tinfoil is often used by phone snatchers to stop the device’s location being detected.
It is believed that snatchers, often on electric bikes around hotspot areas like Oxford Street and Tottenham Court Road, have been temporarily stashing the phones in the garden for collection at a later date.
Ms Gates said some of the theft victims had arrived at the garden after tracking their device’s signal through Apple’s Find My app.
Ms Gates said if she could find the emergency contact information on the phone, she called the number provided.
“They’re all really so grateful, which is nice,” she said.
“Other times I charge it up, but nobody rings, I don’t know who it belongs to or I can’t find them on social media, so I just take it to the police station.”
Ron Chenery, a volunteer of two years, said finding phones was a regular occurrence.
“Most of us love the garden so much, we’re constantly out in the fresh air. If we see something we hand it in,” he said.
Community worker Elliot Hughes, who helps local students access the garden and get into nature, said it was important to teach young people about the wider risks of phone theft across the capital.
“The best we can do is give awareness” he said. “There’s young people now, walking around central London on their phones, in the middle of the street, which are essentially £1,000 computers.
“So [I am] just highlighting to them maybe the things they shouldn’t be doing.”
A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said local officers had stepped up patrols in the area to identify potential phone snatching offenders.
“By intensifying our efforts we’re catching more perpetrators and protecting people from having their phone stolen in the capital and have reduced theft by 16% since April.
“We’re also dismantling organised crime groups suspected of large-scale phone theft.”
The force called on phone companies including Apple and Samsung for security improvements that would make stolen phones harder to sell.