Moped-enabled crime

I thought you had a brompton

only on train days

I've seen large groups hooning about on mopeds for ages but only personally witnessed what I am fairly certain was an example of some of them scouting for some fuckery. Was rolling up to the red light at the West end of Crystal Palace Parade, about to go across onto Church Road.

Young looking lad (I assumed from the clothing and size of him) rocks past on quite a powerful motorbike. Rolls straight through the red, closely followed by two similarly dressed guys on one moped, both looking all round them and quite intently at pedestrians. War pretty sinister looking.

I kinda felt the situation developing as they pulled up next to me so I was watching his hands and ready to get out the way/fight if I have to.

Mrs Bear won't know anything about it until its way too late. But, prolly far less likely to be attacked though.

I mean, it's properly scary to think you could be riding along minding your own business and someone comes and puts acid in your face so they can take your bike.

If those were the choices - Acid in face or no bike.

Take the fucking thing.

You seen the bikes the media are bragging about, BMW 750f/gs, not exactly fast urban bikes. They want decent enduro bikes with a pole (shove off the twat). Seen the videos of Brazilian police bike chases? They ate some riders! They are also armed with a sidearm/pistol which is pretty good at disabling humans.

Do you get a choice though?
No flippancy, I mean, I thought it was just "squirt. fall. bike gone. horrible pain"

They ate some riders!

Well, that's just going too far. I'd maybe expect that of Duterte's cops though.

BMW 750

Nah, didn't pay much attention. My greatest threat on the road is sleepy and/or coked up white van drivers and yummy mummy X5/SUV drivers.

Obviously not. That's the point innit.

Silly me didn't read the article about the Apple shop properly earlier. I thought it said 'thousands of iPads' when it was 'thousands of pounds'. Gaurdain article:

https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/2017/nov/13/hammer-wielding-gang-raids-apples-regent-street-london-store-mopeds

Thousands of pounds worth of iPhones could mean two iPhones...

Could some kind of tracking not be used? Sure they have something during riots that the police can 'tag' people with from a distance and then find them later. Obviously they would not be able to 'scan' people on the street but if someone was apprehended later and found to have been previously tagged then they can then be held accountable?

https://www.pss-1.com

There's a certain beauty in Apple getting robbed and the fact that had they paid the correct taxes, there might have been more coppers around to deter/foil the robbery in the first place.

Happened in Edinburgh two months ago. Police went for a "no chase" policy after one of the scrotes died in a chase, then almost a year later, motorbike crime is out of control, and a 10 year old (ish?) kid gets git at high speed by a stolen bike with scrotes on board
What seems to have made most difference us the pressure on parents by other parents, as they were same estate (both the kid that was hit and the thieves).

I was recently talking to someone who works with young offenders about this.

A large part of the trouble is that it isn't kids nicking these things to sell down the pub. It's stealing to order for them to be shipped out of the country (to defeat the sim lock) and you can earn £5,000 a week doing it.

Earning that kind of money it's difficult to convince youths that this isn't a valid option (even the ones who've been caught) even if it does become a bit risky. Cutting out that part of the chain will stop it happening.

earn £5,000 a week doing it.

How many phones would one have to pinch to earn that kind of money?

10 a day or so from what I gather. (Obviously decent iphones, Samsungs, etc. which they target)

Apparently the phones go to Morocco, get cracked, then come back to Europe for resell.

What are they doing in Morocco that they can't do here?

Dunno, it's just what a guy from Morocco told me.

Blimey. That's some crime wave if a load of crims are doing it.

How many phones would one have to pinch to earn that kind of money?

50-100 phones at £100-200 each?

But my understanding of it is that once a phone is stolen they can often do contactless payments from it and all sorts of other fraud with the details they can recover from it, my estimate will be high.