Moped-enabled crime

With no international IMEI blocking agency you can sell those phones/devices to any one of the billions of consumers outside Europe..

Restoring a phone to a blank state is not a technological hurdle.

Scooter scrotes are actually looking to rob people of bicycles now? Jeez. I thought it was just stuff they could grab out of people's hands and other scooters.

Four pages in and not one comment on the savage cuts the Met have had to bear under austerity?

It’s no wonder they struggle to catch criminals when their budget has been cut by almost a third in the past 7 years.

Well I guess most people (myself included) seem to know a few people that it's happened to so if you spread that out across the whole of London it's a lot of phones.

Iirc Medellin, Colombia used to have a law prohibiting male pillions due to the murders on bikes.

it's a lot of phones.

Yeah. It is. And I guess if you want £thousands per week by stealing phones you've got to commit a serious amount of moped enabled muggings. You'd think the sheer volume of crime required would be a bit of a deal breaker but I guess as long as 200 muggings results in broadly the same sentence as one mugging * then hey, why not.

* do they? I guess I'm assuming these people make broadly rational risk / reward choices.

Oliver Schick:

I was thinking that the only way of getting to grips with the problem
might be a regulatory response, to ban such mopeds altogether, which
will never happen, but I can't see right now what other strategies
might work.

Surely this whole thread is focussed on the wrong premise: that increased legislation stops crime?

I'd like to suggest that perhaps, if there was some kind of hope for these kids - that one day they might have jobs, homes, a decent salary, some life security - then they might not want to take the huge risks that are involved in (moped-facilitated) crime.

Of course, I may just be living in a fantasy world, but from what I see increased inequalities between those who have the opportunities (most of the people posting on this forum, I'd imagine - but, particularly, the ruling classes within our society) and those who don't (viz, the ones who participate in "criminal" behaviours) are the real reasons behind increased violence in society. And, until we start talking about and acknowledging such inequalities, things are unlikely to get much better....

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Im so glad I had moved out of london when this started all becoming a bigger thing in the news. At the start of the year I was riding my scooter around and tbh there was a couple of times I really felt I was gonna get robbed by scum bags on other bikes. Its fuckin madness now.

Then one day I got stopped by a bike cop and unmarked car doing a check, they were fuckin useless trying to get me for something stupid when in fact there is people out there commenting real crimes on the regular.

The acid thing is also terrifying too.

That's not true.

They have loads of choices. They could become grime stars.

Pretty sure I read somewhere people's brains don't fully develop until their in their early 20s. Teenagers are notoriously poor decision-makers (although if there is a very low risk of capture and conviction and a high level of reward then they are likely making a rational choice).

You can't write off inequalities between have/nots but I think it's more complex and nuanced.

Also violent crime is on the decrease. Massively in the developed world over a 20yr period.

Also pretty sure kids born post 2007 are less likely than any present ones to get caught up in typical teenage vices.

I'd agree with you that making crime illegal doesn't prevent it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFmj1s8nD70

this is how police motorbike chases should be.

Strong skills at 7:00.

Shit thats intense. That copper can handle a bike

Looks like fun until you die or lose half of your skin. Yay motorbikes!

They should bring some Brazilian motorbike cops over to mix things up a bit.

Not bad. I was waiting for this though.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nvfnBlcfx2w

Bloody loved Blade Runner

If only they done that in london there maybe wouldnt be as much.

Cripes, proper sweaty palms and raised HR watching that.

Surely this whole thread is focussed on the wrong premise: that increased legislation stops crime?

I certainly didn't mean to suggest that legislation is a better way towards reducing crime than increasing social justice. I'm also well aware of the funding cuts the police are suffering.

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/14/uk-police-funding-minor-crimes-bedfordshire-sussex-budget

I am, however, not hopeful that the more important and wider-ranging improvements will happen anytime soon.

this is how police motorbike chases should be.

Obviously entirely impossible in a place as busy as London, and very dangerous even where it was filmed.

What happens at the end? Does the guy just run out of fuel?

Only real way to deal with moped crimes is spike. But mass deployemnt is required. And im not sure if its considered reckless.

Yes, I saw that Guardian article too. Maybe it's time to start privatising the police force too (alongside the health service, that is)??

But seriously...

I am, however, not hopeful that the more important and wider-ranging improvements will happen anytime soon.

They certainly won't if we don't at the very least talk about a better alternative. Better still we get out and do something (I'm a fine one to talk, I know - I don't even live in the UK anymore!): protest, agitate, raise awareness of a better / different way... the world (to me) is a much more worrying place than it was 10 or even 20 years ago - but 30 years ago and I thought it was all shit too (middle of thatcher's eighties) and it did definitely get better after that. So there is always some hope.

As in road spikes? How would you exactly mass deploy that when you can move anywhere and everywhere before authorities can deploy any of it? They're not riding on the road...they're riding everywhere. How many spikes do plod have per transgression?

and @ObiWomKenobi fair do's. Chase them. Great policy, but who would do that? How many? That video is all exciting and all, but how much budget does the plod have to allocate all those scrotes causing all this havoc and for how long exactly?

Without gloves too.