MAY 9, 2007
http://www.delmarvanow.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070509/NEWS01/705090421/1002
Police Report
ANGOLA —
“Six Verizon Wireless stores broken into”
SNIPPET: “CENTREVILLE, Md. (AP) — Six stores selling Verizon Wireless phones have been broken into recently and storeowners are taking proactive steps to protect their stores in Easton, Cambridge, Centreville and Denton, police said.
Easton police said they have a suspect identified but they don’t know why Verizon stores were being targeted.
Easton Detective Sgt. George Paugh said the suspects travel together from store to store and throw a heavy object through the front door. Then he said they enter the store stealing cell phones, digital cameras, Bluetooth kits and other items. Police said some of the break-ins didn’t involve any thefts. Police said at least $8,000 in products have been stolen.”
PAKISTAN
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=51584
Friday, May 11, 2007, Rabi-us-sani 23, 1428 A.H.
“PTA, CPLC anti-cell phone theft system
Need to train police for drive’s success”
By Imran Ayub
Karachi
ARTICLE SNIPPET: “Growing concerns against street crime pushed the authorities to move in this regard. There has been a marked rise in the theft of mobile phones, particularly in Karachi, and there are fears that the stolen phones end up in markets across the city where they are resold.
Some telecom experts say that the market for stolen phones, sold as “reconditioned models” is larger than that of new phones in the city. The figures compiled by the provincial institution suggest that a total of 44,388 cell phones were snatched or stolen in 2006 only. Such thefts and snatchings were recorded at 27,764 in 2005, suggesting a 60 per cent increase in a single year.
However, the PTA claims the system designed to curb the crime would give better results by the year end. “So far, approximately 40,000 mobile handsets have been made dysfunctional during the last five months of the IMEI system launch,” said the quarterly report.
At this, there are some who say that the phones made dysfunctional are easily reused after some re-engineering at local shops in the city. The report has said that PTA and CPLC offices in Karachi had been registering three hundred complaints daily since the launch of the IMEI system in October 2006 for the blockage of snatched and stolen mobile phones.
“The response of the public and related organisations is quite encouraging,” said the PTA, adding that its regional office in Karachi had been declared as the central body of the network formed for the purpose of coordinated efforts in implementing the IMEI programme.
The PTA claims, however, need to be seen in a more realistic perspective. More than four thousand cell phones were taken away in the city during February 2007 alone, according to official data.
The data released by local police authorities marked Gulshan-e-Iqbal as a hotspot for criminals, where managed to snatch 243 sets one month. Despite the lower than expected results, the Karachi metropolis remains the only city across Pakistan which possesses an anti cell phone theft system, and the telecom regrets so far no other city appears interested in devising such a policy to discourage cell phone snatching.
“Except CPLC at Karachi, no other law enforcement agency in the rest of the country, like CPLC is other cities and Police 15 etc. is currently accepting complaints,” added the PTA report.”