Every day it seems, the sidewalks are filled with people whose eyes are squarely affixed to the little rectangular screens on their phones. Their total lack of situational awareness enables and emboldens crooks who can sneak up on an unsuspecting individual, snatch a phone, and convert it to drug money (or whatever else they plan to do with the stolen goods) in a New York minute. Knowing full well that the behavior of the average “sheeple” on the streets isn’t likely to change anytime soon, there are some things cops can do to help mitigate the problem of such “easy-pickin’s cell phone theft.”
While attending an in-service training a couple of days ago, I heard a few good tips related to questioning the victim of a robbery (or attempted robbery) of their mobile device.
Always try to ask the victim, “Where were you and what were you doing immediately before this happened? Where were you and what were you doing before that?”
This way, if you have a number of victims to question (and you know you will eventually have exactly that), and you have good information on all their pre-incident activities, you may be able to determine consistencies which indicate where your violators are picking up their victims.
“I was at the yogurt place” or “I came out of the subway right over there” or something else to this effect can give you a good location to target for your suspects.
The likelihood of getting a stolen cell phone back into the hands of its rightful owner are admittedly remote. However, with one or two extra interview questions per victim, you might just find and arrest the source of the problem.
Happy hunting. Stay safe.
