How a cellphone thief snatched 24 mobiles value £20,000 in only one hour

With the lives of a mother, her baby and young child at risk, traffic cop Jordan Smith — at the wheel of his unmarked Volvo XC90 — had to make a split-second decision.

Should he knock a fleeing phone thief from his high-speed electric motorbike and face the ­consequences? Or just hope the e-bike — now mounting the pavement — would miss the mum and her children?

PC Smith’s duty was clear. He clipped the bike with his vehicle and took out the thief, Sonny Stringer, a violent offender who had snatched an incredible 24 handsets in little over an hour.

‘Thieves on e-bikes will do anything to evade detection and arrest,’ says PC Smith, just 25.

‘And if that means endangering members of the public, then that’s exactly what they’ll do.

‘When my partner and I first saw Stringer, he was coming round a bus and was about to mount the pavement where there was a mother holding the hand of a young child and pushing a pram.

‘Those bikes can go as fast as 70 mph and they’re a fair old weight, so if he’d hit the mother and her children, he could have killed or seriously injured them.

‘I had to make an instant decision — but I knew immediately that it was the right thing to do.’

Yesterday, Stringer, 28, from Islington, North London, who broke his knee during the incident in the City of London, pleaded guilty to ten charges of theft, dangerous driving and having no insurance, at Isleworth Crown Court in West London.

He will be sentenced in August with the maximum penalty for theft being seven years in jail.

Last night, to the delight of victims everywhere who’ve had their phone stolen, dashcam footage of Stringer being knocked off his ­e-bike went viral. When he was interviewed by police, he repeatedly said: ‘No comment.’

Though he worked night shifts near Smithfield meat market in London, it’s clear that stealing phones in daylight was more lucrative until he had to face the consequences.

The charges against him belied the extent to which he and an ­unidentified accomplice — who is still being sought — terrorised victims in London’s West End and ­financial district on March 26, when they went on a phone theft spree which netted Stringer alone two dozen handsets worth in the region of £20,000.

His modus operandi was to drive his quiet Surron-branded electric motorbike behind victims as they used their phones. Then, with practised skill, he would simply snatch the devices and speed off.

‘People’s phones are so very important to them — so to apprehend a perpetrator, to successfully use the tactic to bring him down, and then to recover so many phones was a very rewarding day,’ says PC Smith.

City of London police have so far managed to reunite 12 victims with their phones — many within 24 hours of the thefts — but very few people who have handsets stolen are so lucky.

Research in 2022 concluded that only 2 per cent of phones are recovered. According to the Office for National Statistics, incidents of ‘theft from the person’ were up 18 per cent last year in England and Wales, rising to 125,563, the highest for almost two decades.

Of these, one in three thefts involves a phone — though in London that rises to around 70 per cent, according to the Metropolitan Police. In 2022, almost 91,000 phones were stolen in the capital — one every six minutes.

Freedom of Information requests to police forces countrywide by website getphonerepairs.com found that 136,520 mobile phones were reported stolen in 2022, a haul worth more than £48 million.

This is likely to be only the tip of the iceberg, as many people don’t bother reporting phone thefts.

Worse still, everything from banking apps, photographs, emails, contacts and messages can be exploited by thieves in ­further identity-theft scams.

And if phones are unlocked when stolen, as snatched phones often are, passwords can be changed, locking the victim out of their banking, email and social media apps. Then, digital wallets containing credit cards, and financial apps, possibly containing cash or crypto assets, can be plundered.

‘Typically, criminals target busy streets, transport hubs and ­people outside pubs, clubs and restaurants,’ says Mick Duthie, director of operations at Crimestoppers.

Stringer ticked many of these location boxes during his March rampage. When reports of thefts began coming into control rooms, first at the Met and then City of London police, it became clear that something out of the ordinary was happening.

At 10.15 am, a woman standing at a road-crossing near Baker Street Underground station who was using her phone to find directions had it snatched from her hand. At about 10.30 am, Stringer whisked another handset from a woman on Edgware Road near Marble Arch.

The next victim, at 10.38 am, on Cromwell Place near South Kensington tube station, a stone’s throw from the Science Museum, was NHS technician Tyler Myson, 28. ‘I was just walking down the road messaging on my phone and suddenly someone came from behind on an e-bike and yanked it from my hand,’ he tells the Mail.

‘It all happened so quickly. He was on a Surron bike and I know they can go faster than 40 mph. I tried to sprint after him but then his pal came and brushed past me on his bike to intimidate me even more. I was devastated. It wasn’t so much that I was frightened, I’m from London, I know these things happen. But it was a £1,500 Samsung Ultra that I’d only bought the week before. I had insurance for damage, but not for theft.

‘My whole life was in there: ­calendar appointments, contact numbers, messages, pictures, ­everything. It even had the number of a girl I was supposed to go on a date with that night. Well, that never happened.

‘When I heard that this guy had 24 phones on him when he was caught, I just felt bad for all the tourists he must have stolen from because that would be their impression of my city forever.

‘And I wondered how terrifying it must have been for the women he and his accomplice had targeted.

‘These guys are just lazy, greedy scumbags.’

The next victim was a man taking a photo near Wellington Arch, Hyde Park. Stringer slapped the phone out of the man’s hand before catching it and riding off.

Then the thief stole from a man taking a picture of a receipt in Regent Street. He was pushed in the chest before Stringer grabbed the handset and sped away. Next came thefts from a woman making a call in Orange Street at the junction with Haymarket. And from a man using his phone at a pedestrian crossing on Victoria Street, Westminster; then another from a man walking towards Green Park around 11 am.

There were other thefts, too, but not all of them were reported. We only know the details of these because they were among the 12 handsets City of London police were able to return to their owners, who then made statements.

At 11.15 am, Stringer and his sidekick made the mistake that was to bring Stringer down. They stole from a woman on Blackfriars Bridge and moved into City of London police territory.

The City force has fewer than 1,000 officers policing the Square Mile, which includes London’s banking district, but it is gaining a national reputation for being proactive and fast on its feet.

Last month, it earned plaudits for smashing a criminal gang that had made millions from breaking into cars and stealing their contents — resulting in an 85 per cent drop in such crime.

In February, its officers caught members of a bicycle theft network, after which bike thefts in the City fell by 90 per cent.

Unlike most other police forces, which have to request CCTV coverage from councils, resulting in delays, City police own and control the cameras in the Square Mile. This meant they were able to mount a lightning fast operation to intercept the thieves.

In the force’s nerve centre at Bishopsgate station, control officer Lynn Newins, 50, got to work. ‘I took a call from a member of the public who had witnessed a phone-snatching on the south side of Blackfriars Bridge,’ she says. One of her colleagues said that they had already picked up the suspects on camera.

‘I quickly started relaying information to officers on the ground. In the control room we can manage the position of the cameras ourselves, which is very useful and speeds up our ability to track criminals.

‘We spun the cameras around on Cheapside and updated officers on the phone snatchers’ path,’ she says. ‘I remember saying they were ‘going like the clappers’ and could see members of the public having to avoid being hit by them.’

PC Smith and his colleague PC Joe Little, 26, were closely following the control room updates.

‘Joe is renowned for his knowledge of every street and alleyway in the City,’ says PC Smith. ‘So he was able to anticipate where they would be heading, probably before they realised it themselves.’

PC Little directed his colleague towards Bank Station rather than attempting to embark on a pursuit — which can be dangerous for bystanders. That way, the officers would be facing the crooks as they came down Cheapside.

The police car’s dashcam footage shows Stringer speeding towards them, but first he has to overtake a double-decker bus.

‘This acted like a sort of chicane, that slowed him down to a speed that would not be too dangerous to knock him off — and, besides, I had the mother with the pram to think about,’ says PC Smith.

The mother, the pram and the child can be seen on the film at 11.27am, and so can Stringer, steering his bike on to the pavement and towards them. In a flash — and only feet away from the mother and children — PC Smith veers into Stringer, who is knocked to the ground. The fortunate mother strolled on and was never identified by police.

The police car had barely stopped before PC Little was out, Taser in hand, chasing Stringer next to the Bank of England and yelling: ‘Get down on the floor!’ Realising the game was up, the thief complied.

‘Because of their links to organised crime, many of these phone thieves carry weapons,’ says PC Little. ‘We had an incident on Bishopsgate a while ago where four members of the public were stabbed by two mobile phone thieves, so I was taking no chances.’ Last August, those thieves, Louis Parkinson, 26, and Tyrone Dean, 24, were each jailed for 12 years.

Before his arrest, Stringer threw aside a ‘Faraday’ bag. Such bags contain an electromagnetic shield that can block phone signals and prevent phones being tracked and located. There were 22 handsets inside, while a further two had fallen out during the collision.

PC Lynne Stokes, 37, led the operation to gather evidence and reunite owners with their phones.

‘A colleague and I went through each phone to see if we could find any names, any phone numbers, any contact details, and that’s how we tracked down around half of the people whose phones we were able to return,’ she says.

‘We had some people who were tourists, others who just couldn’t believe their luck and even one person who had an important hospital appointment and couldn’t remember where they were supposed to go and had been in a panic. But we were able to help them. It was wonderful. It felt like we’d really made people’s day, and we were so pleased for them. But we still have 12 to return.’

PC Smith’s decision to hit Stringer’s bike was based on training he had received in ‘tactical pursuit and containment’, or TPAC, in which an officer must consider the safety of suspects and bystanders.

Only 25 officers in the City of London police are qualified in TPAC. If he had behaved rashly, PC Smith could have been disciplined. But his actions were reviewed by the City of London police’s professional standards department and the Independent Office of Police Conduct. On April 23 — a month after the incident — he was cleared of wrongdoing.

‘It was good to hear the results of the review, but I’d never had any doubts about using that tactic on the day. If I hadn’t, someone could have been hurt,’ he says.

As it happens, no tears will be shed for the only person who was.

• If you think your phone might be among those unclaimed, call: 020 7601 2222 ref 177793.