Phone robbery foiled by students
Student intervention helped stop phone jacking near Gloucester Road station.
Two students were able to stop the attempted robbery of another student near Gloucester Road station on the night of Thursday 28th November. The students, who wish to remain anonymous, were on their way to the tube station when they ran into an altercation between another Imperial student and a member of the public.
The would–be victim, who also wishes to remain anonymous, called for help as the students approached the scene, causing the attempted phone–jacker to flee from the scene, dropping the phone. Returning later to try and recover the phone, the thief claimed the dropped phone was his, until the students verified that the phone belonged to the Imperial student using the phone’s facial recognition software.
The attacker then began to apologise and “kept yapping on”, trying to disarm the situation, until he finally left the area.
The would-be victim says they will not conduct press charges or notify police about the incident. They also believe the incident was “isolated and unlikely to happen” but will “definitely be more vigilant” [sic].
After ensuring the student whose phone was almost stolen was safe and passing along their contact details, the students were then questioned by the police who had arrived on the scene to investigate the disturbance a few minutes after the attacker had fled.
The students all said the attacker was acting erratically, or under the influence of some kind of drug.
78,000 phones or bags were snatched in 2023, a 150% increase from 2022. Almost 64,000 phone thefts occurred in London alone. Early in September 2024, the government announced a crackdown to reduce the number of phone thefts occurring in the UK.
Policing Minister Diane Johnson said: “As part of our Safer Streets mission, this new government is determined to crack down on snatch theft, knife-enabled robbery, and other crimes that make people feel unsafe in our communities,” and pledged to increase policing and working with phone manufacturers to make it harder to reset phones to sell second–hand after they had been stolen.
