New York City’s crime rate ticked up a bit in 2012, and Mayor Michael Bloomberg says he knows what’s to blame: iPhones, iPads and the people who steal them.
The city counted 108,432 “major crimes” during 2012, which is 3,484, or 3.3 percent more than the 104,948 major crimes in the city last year. Meanwhile, Apple product thefts rose by 3,890 during the year.
The mayor’s spokesperson noted that “[i]f you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year,” the New York Times reported.
New York City is not the only major metro area dealing with a wave of smartphone thefts. For 2012, the city of San Francisco reported that about half of all robberies involved a phone, and usually took place on a subway or a bus.
Because of the uptick in phone thefts, this year carriers and the FCC worked together to create a national stolen phone database. Third-party consumer electronics resellers have also stepped up their efforts to prevent resale of stolen devices.
Image courtesy of Flickr user Alan Cleaver
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