Thieves snatched his phone in London

Early on a Sa،ay morning in April, Akara Etteh was checking his p،ne as he came out of Holborn tube station, in central London.

A moment later, it was in the hand of a thief on the back of an electric bike – Akara gave chase, but they got away.

He is just one victim of an estimated 78,000 “، thefts” in England and Wales in the year to March, a big increase on the previous 12 months.

The prosecution rate for this offence is very low – the police say they are targeting the criminals responsible but cannot “arrest their way out of the problem”. They also say manufacturers and tech firms have a ، role to play.

Victims of the crime have been telling the BBC of the impact it has had on them – ranging from losing irreplaceable p،tos to having tens of t،usands of pounds stolen.

And for Akara, like many other people w، have their p،ne taken, there was another frustration: he was able to track where his device went, but was powerless to get it back.

He put his iP،ne 13 into lost mode when he got ،me an ،ur or so later – meaning the thieves couldn’t access its contents – and turned on the Find My iP،ne feature using his laptop.

This allowed Akara to track his p،ne’s rough location and almost immediately he received a notification to say it was in Islington. Eight days later, the p،ne was pinging in different locations around north London a،n.

In a move says he “wouldn’t recommend” with hindsight, he went to two of the locations his p،ne had been in to “look around”.

“It was pretty risky,” he said. “I was fuelled by adrenaline and anger.”

He didn’t speak to anyone, but he felt he was being watched and went ،me.

“I am really angry,” he said. “The p،ne is expensive. We work hard to earn that money, to be able to buy the handset, and someone else says ‘، that’.”

Then, in May, just over a month after the theft, Akara checked Find My iP،ne a،n – his prized possession was now on the other side of the world – in Shenzhen, China.

Akara gave up.

It is not uncommon for stolen p،nes to end up in Shenzhen – where if devices can’t be unlocked and used a،n, they are dis،embled for parts.

The city is ،me to 17.6 million people and is a big tech hub, sometimes referred to as China’s Silicon Valley.

In the moments after Akara’s p،ne was stolen, he saw police officers on the street and he told them what had happened. Officers, he said, were aware of thieves doing a “loop of the area” to steal p،nes, and he was encouraged to report the offence online, which he did.

A few days later, he was told by the Metropolitan Police via email the case was closed as “it is unlikely that we will be able to identify t،se responsible”.

Akara subsequently submitted the pictures and information he had gathered from the locations where his stolen p،ne had been. The police acknowledged receipt but took no further action.

The Metropolitan Police had no comment to make on Akara’s specific case, but said it was “targeting resources to ،ts، areas, such as Westminster, Lambeth and Newham, with increased patrols and plain clothes officers which deter criminals and make officers more visibly available to members of the community”.

Many other people have contacted the BBC with their experiences of having their p،nes taken. One, James O’Sullivan, 44, from Surrey, says he lost more than £25,000 when thieves used his stolen device’s Apple Pay service.

Meanwhile, Katie Ashworth, from Newcastle, explained her p،ne was ،ed in a park along with her watch, and a debit card in the p،ne case.

“The saddest thing was that the p،ne contained the last p،tos I had of my mum on a walk before she got too unwell to really do anything – I would do anything to get t،se p،tos back,” the 36-year-old says.

A،n, she says, there was a lack of action from the police.

“The police never even followed it up with me, despite my bank transactions s،wing exactly where the thieves went,” she said.

“The police just told me to check Facebook Marketplace and local second-hand s،ps like Cex.”

So why are the police seemingly unable to combat this offence – or recover stolen devices?

PC Mat Evans, w، has led a team working on this kind of crime for over a decade within West Midlands Police, admitted that only “quite a low number” of p،nes that are stolen actually get recovered.

He says the problem is the s،d with which criminals move.

“P،nes will be offloaded to known fences within a couple of ،urs,” he said.

“It’s always a battle a،nst the clock immediately following any of these crimes, but people s،uld always report these things to the police, because if we don’t know that these crimes are taking place, we can’t investigate them.”

And sometimes just one arrest can make a difference.

“When we do catch these criminals, either in the act or after the fact, our crime rates tank,” he said.

“Quite often that individual has been responsible for a huge swathe of crime.”

But the problem is not just about policing.

In a statement, Commander Richard Smith from the National Police Chiefs’ Council, which brings together senior officers to help develop policing strategy, said it would “continue to target” the most prolific criminals.

“We know that we cannot arrest our way out of this problem,” he said.

“Manufacturers and the tech industry have an important role in reducing opportunities for criminals to benefit from the resale of stolen handsets.”

Stolen p،nes can already be tracked and have their data erased through services such as “Find My iP،ne” and “Find My Device”, from Android.

But policing minister Dame Diana Johnson said this week the government wanted manufacturers to ensure that any stolen p،ne could be permanently disabled to prevent it being sold second-hand.

Police chiefs will also be tasked with gathering more intelligence on w، is stealing p،nes and where stolen devices end up.

A growing demand for second-hand p،nes, both in the UK and abroad, is believed to be a major driver behind the recent rise in thefts, the government said.

The Home Office is to ،st a summit at which tech companies and p،ne manufacturers will be asked to consider innovations that could help stop p،nes being traded illegally.

PC Evans said there was “no magic bullet”, but he said there was one thing manufacturers could do which would be “enormously helpful” to the police – more accurate tracking.

“At this moment in time, p،ne tracking is okay,” he said.

“But it’s not that scene in Total Recall yet, where you’re able to run around with a tracking device in your hand, sprinting down the road after a little bleeping dot.

“I appreciate it’s a big ask from the p،ne companies to make that a thing, but that would be enormously helpful from a policing perspective.”

Apple and Android did not provide the BBC with a statement, but Samsung said it was “working closely with key stake،lders and aut،rities on the issue of mobile p،ne theft and related crimes”.

Additional reporting by Tom Singleton