A reader’s husband had his iPhone stolen on Tuesday, April 1. Thanks to phone tracking, they knew where it was. They tried to get the police to go after it. The police didn’t seem interested. Is this a case of “Big city, a lot of crime” or a missed opportunity? Read the letter below and a response from a West Philly police officer.
If West Philly police want to stop crime, why do they take it so lightly?
My husband’s iPhone was stolen last night. This morning, the thief called one of the contacts in the phone book on the phone, someone who happens to live nearby. Our friend took the bait to buy it back trying to be helpful. In a park at 48th & Lancaster, he gave the guy $20. The guy threw him just the case and ran away. Our friend came to our house at 5am today to tell us the story. We tracked the phone on “find my iPhone”. Seeing it still at the same park, but starting to move down 48th St, we called 911. When asked what to expect, they said an officer will call us within an hour to take a report. I pointed out that we knew where a thief was located at this minute. I was given attitude, “It’s just a stolen phone, ma’am.” I pointed out that I am the one trying to be helpful if police want to affect crime in the area. The 911 operator backed down a bit and said that it’s not how it works. Police do not go retrieve stolen phones. They will take our statement for our insurance purposes.
I know it is just a phone. But really!? We received the same attitude after a break-in to our house in 2005 – “here is the statement for your insurance”. As for the phone, we locked it, so he had no choice but to call us and try to sell it back, stating he just purchased it on 46th & Market, but that is silly, as we were tracking it. Even if I played along, I did not feel comfortable for either of us to meet him. I offered him a chance to be a nice person and leave it at a business for us, but I guess he’ll sell it somewhere and we will buy a new one.
Seems like a missed opportunity by the police to me. Should we do something different next time?
Here’s a response from officer Joe Murray from the Southwest Police Detectives.
The only thing I’ll refute is that we definitely don’t take crime lightly. This is the dispatcher’s fault and we would obviously love to track the phone. They have every right to feel outraged.
The only thing I’d do differently is drive right to the district or Southwest Detectives and tell a cop directly. It’s happened before and we’ve gone out and recovered the phone.
April 3rd, 2014 at 10:58 am
I had my phone (and wallet, friend’s purse, etc.) stolen too, at gunpoint. I offered to the police to use the phone tracking software which was working at that very moment. Instead, they drove me and my friend around for a couple hours stopping random people on the street and asking us if they matched the suspects, which when having a gun pressed against your head and your face pressed against a car at night, its sort of hard to tell one person from another.
Never even got to file a report, they told us that it would probably be an extra 3 hours (5-6am) until they would have the time to file a report with us. All of this went unreported, and I was watching the thief move around on my phone’s gps as this was happening. They really just didn’t care.
I’m not saying this happens all the time, but it was some definite bs.
/end rant.
April 3rd, 2014 at 11:47 am
When I was attacked by a group of teenagers on the street around 50th and Baltimore, I called 911. I actually stood in the street, prepared to point out the attackers, who were in plain view. Response time was about 3 hours. The police officer who finally arrived was polite and professional. She, as well as a number of people who work in some connection with police or the city, all explained to me that the problem is 911 dispatch, which apparently has been farmed out to an external entity. My question is, if 911 dispatch is so problematic locally, why hasn’t it changed and what can happen to make it change.
April 3rd, 2014 at 1:39 pm
UGH. Sad to report that anon’s experience of random line-ups is not an isolated incident.
When I was assaulted by a group of teenagers on 41st St. the police came in about 20 minutes and – despite the fact I said that I could not identify the kids – drove me to the projects on 40th St and made several teenage boys come up to the car to see if I could ID one. The whole experience was awful.
I then waited nearly an hour at the station to give my report. In that time, an officer looked at my swollen and bleeding face and grunted “domestic?” at me and the police tried to convince me I did not need to go to the hospital. I insisted and three hours later found out that my jaw had been broken and dislocated. The entire time, I felt that the officers were more concerned with trying to identify the assailants and get all of the correct paperwork filled out than with my well-being. When I checked UCD crime statistics for that month later in the year, the assault was not included.
A Penn police officer later told me that I should call their security number instead of 911 for anything east of 43rd St. I was mugged a few blocks from the station at 40th & Chestnut but had to wait for police from the 18th district at 55th to respond to the call.
Sorry to rant . . .
April 3rd, 2014 at 1:46 pm
Not to disparage the letter writer and the commenters above, but I don’t think they understand the role of today’s city police. City police are not the FBI or the Marshal Service; it is not PPD’s purview to take an active role in seeking out criminals. Philadelphia (and other municipalities) police’s only role is to dissuade the disruption of trade and protect property from disturbances. They do this via a show of force and physical intimidation. They drive around in cruisers and shine lights in citizens’ faces while interrogating them about their daily activities. Through this, they hope to create an environment that makes people afraid to steal iPhones and wallets from other people. When something is stolen, however, the police’s only responsibility is to take a report, so that they know where to increase police presence.
That’s why it might seem to you that ‘the report’ is so much more important to the police than looking at your phone tracking software. They don’t want to find your phone; they want to know which areas to spend more time cruising in the future.
The idea of a cop chasing down a purse snatcher or leaving no stone unturned in looking for a phone thief I’m afraid is a fabrication of Hollywood. Look at the work ‘police’ itself; from their inception, police forces’ charter is to keep the population in order–not look for a phone in the middle of the city.
April 3rd, 2014 at 1:55 pm
Steve –
I think the more troubling issues to me are that 1) the reports are not filed in some cases or, in mine, are not reflected in official crime statistics given to the public and 2) that the police go out of their way to harass random people on the street in a manner that is unlikely to produce suspects, traumatizes victims, and likely does more to intensify tensions between residents and police than anything else.
April 3rd, 2014 at 2:10 pm
I’m sorry your phone was stolen However, with limited resources on our police force, I’m not certain that chasing smartphone thieves is the best use of manpower. On the other hand, as a taxpaying citizen, you should not get “attitude” when you call for help.
April 3rd, 2014 at 2:40 pm
Edi–
I’m sorry about your experience with the assault, and I sympathize that the PPD did nothing to help you. To your point about your assault not showing up in the statistics, I’m afraid you can chalk that up to the well-known practice of ‘juking the stats’, they probably downgraded your assault to jaywalking, so that some career desk police could keep their jobs and get some good press.
As for harassing random innocent people in the neighborhood: I agree that it won’t help find the perpetrators and it makes the citizens hate the police tactics, but you should realize that it is done to intimidate the neighborhood by threatening them not to assault other people in the future–not to sincerely ferret out your assailants. I agree it is futile and harmful, but it is all that the police are going to do; they are not guardian angels.
April 4th, 2014 at 12:34 am
i was swung at by a dude who then followed me a block and then i went up onto a porch on the 45 block of spruce and he followed me and had me trapped. dude was having some kinda episode and i was the enemy. i called 911 as i was walking about 5 minutes of standing on this porch a police van drives by and i yell at them and they keep going. then i call 911 again and another 5 minutes or so goes by and another cop comes down the hill and pulls over behind someone unloading groceries to give them some grief. i yell at this cop to come help me and he annoyingly waves me to hold on. then he finally comes over and i have to explain to him the situation because he new nothing of my call to 911. a few minutes later another or the same van comes over. i think they were responding to the call. this whole time i’m trying to get a schizophrenic not to kill me. so something is wrong with the system.
April 4th, 2014 at 12:41 am
is there a way for the public to post crimes on a map somewhere so that we are not relying on police reports to get filed at least for the purpose of us monitoring our communities? in my case above the cops told me the guy would be driven down the street and released and i was ok with that. but i know that this same guy has acted out violently towards other people when he’s seeing demons or whatever. he hangs out around 47th and baltimore and seems mostly ok. but his mental health is obviously not stable.
April 4th, 2014 at 9:10 am
Yes, once again, the link between 911 and local police notification is broken. It would be nice if it were fixed, but in the meantime I guess we should best investigate alternative ways of notifying the police. Maybe calling the district directly, at least as a backup?
April 4th, 2014 at 1:37 pm
Jason, it is not a crime to be “mentally unstable”. The police can not arrest a man because someone on the street declares him to be “schizophrenic”.
Seems like there are a lot of complaints about the police response time or the 911 efficiency. If you are getting mugged or assaulted, unless the police are standing across the street and the response time is less than 10 seconds, it is too late. Filing a report won’t help your fractured jaw. I think we should be focusing more on prevention of crime than the response to it.
If the only thing you can do about crime is to make a phone call after the fact, and then wait for someone to drive to your location, then you are helpless. This is assuming the criminals have not incapacitated you and/or taken your phone.
April 4th, 2014 at 3:02 pm
just make it clear. i didn’t say that being mentally unstable was a crime.
April 4th, 2014 at 4:03 pm
Could the issue be that they can’t arrest someone based on the word of an iPhone app?
April 7th, 2014 at 12:03 pm
Police routinely use cell towers to locate suspects of serious crimes. Home invasion, robbery,violent crime that constitutes a felony. The do not use any technological tool merely locate a stolen phone. Sorry
April 8th, 2014 at 3:53 pm
There should be a way to map crimes that are unreported, similar to that catcalling map that is going around now. http://mobile.philly.com/news/?wss=%2Fphilly%2Fhp%2Fnews_update%2F&id=253763871
April 15th, 2014 at 6:52 am
The incidents with victims being driven around to identify your assailant on the street: that sounds completely unsafe and I don’t think it’s actually legal or at the least within the purview of acceptable practice as dictated by the police department. editors, I would really appreciate someone following up on that & ask Sgt Murray if it’s supposed to happen that way. I don’t think the police are supposed to drive around victims and potentially put them in danger.
Locally, my dealings with 911 have actually had prompt response. A patrol car showed up at our house within 10 minutes of my boyfriend reporting his mugging (it happened, phone & wallet were taken, he ran home to call). & in his instance, they caught the individual trying to mug people the next day. I also had cop intimidation and got accused of doing something to “make it happen” when I reported my sexual assault in another city years ago. So with cops (like all things), YMMV (your mileage may vary)