They’re used in phone robberies, bag snatches – and now even in acid attacks. They’re easy to steal and hard for the police to pursue. Is there a way to cut this crimewave?

From her office window, Elizabeth O’Neill could see young men on scooters prowling for victims almost every day. “You’d see people waiting at bus stops staring at their phones as these lads were about to snatch them,” she said. “You’d think ‘don’t do it, put your phone away’. And then it happened to me.”

O’Neill, a charity worker, was waiting for a bus “looking at my phone, figuring out where I was going”. It was all over very quickly. “Two lads on a moped snatched it out of my hand and rode off. I felt really stupid.

“There was just the realisation ‘Oh my God, how do I get home – my card is in my phone?’ And how could I contact anyone to tell them what’s happened?”

Over the past two years, scooters and mopeds have become the vehicles of choice for mobile phone robberies, bag snatches and even acid attacks.

The increase has been dramatic. In the 12 months to June 2017, the Metropolitan police recorded 16,158 thefts by people using mopeds – more than three times as many as the 5,145 reported between July 2015 and June 2016. Violent crime rose sharply last year: the latest figures from the Office of National Statistics show an 18% increase in offences against the person.

The thousands of victims include Martin Lewis, founder of MoneySavingExpert.com, while Daniel Radcliffe, the Harry Potter actor, helped a tourist whose face was slashed by muggers stealing his bag. Five people were sprayed with acid by two people on mopeds earlier this month, including a food delivery rider, Jabed Hussain, whose scooter was stolen. On Thursday, Hussain led a protest alongside drivers for Deliveroo and UberEats outside parliament demanding action. They held up a banner saying “Stop acid attacks, bike theft, motorcycle crime”.

So how did the moped become a menace? Supt Mark Payne runs Operation Venice, the Met’s response to moped, scooter and motorcycle crime. He says there are two reasons for the explosion in scooter robberies: the motive created by a growing secondhand market in mobile phones, and the opportunity to steal scooters.

The method used by the moped muggers is simple. First they steal a scooter. They put on balaclavas and helmets. Then two people, one riding pillion, cruise around high streets, looking for people at bus stops, coming out of railway stations, or walking down the road looking at their phone. After spotting a victim, they mount the pavement. The passenger swipes a phone or bag and they speed away. “What’s really changed is the method,” Payne said. “In the past it was done on foot or with bicycles. What they’ve caught on to is that mopeds and scooters are just really easy to steal.”

Play Video 1:03 Moped gang assault man in Park Lane – video

Most scooters are stolen simply by grabbing the handle bars and twisting them to break the steering lock, Payne said. “They just wheel it away. Maybe they’ll leave it for a few hours to see if there is a tracker, and someone comes to find it. Otherwise they’ll open it up, take out the ignition barrel, cross the wires and they’re away.”

In the past 12 months, 14,943 scooters and motorcycles were stolen, up from 11,511. Payne compares scooters to Ford Cortinas in the 1990s, which were notoriously easy to take. The car industry responded, under consumer pressure, by fitting immobilisers as standard. Cheap mopeds have little protection other than the steering lock. Like bicycles, they need to be chained to steel posts – something the Met has been emphasising in its “Be Safe” campaign focusing on thefts of scooters and mobile phones.

Yet according to the Motorcycle Crime Reduction Group, a cross-industry body which advises the Home Office, few riders bother. The MCRG conducted a survey of the security of 193 two-wheelers parked in London earlier this year. Just over half – 50.4% – of scooters were parked without any locks at all. Of those with a chain or lock, only 15% were attached to a metal ground anchor point.

Kevin Howells, the chairman of the MCRG, said they were “shocked” by the results. “In some parking bays you’ve got 30 bikes taking up those spaces and no one’s locked their bike to the street furniture,” he said. “It’s easy pickings. Maybe there should be some legislation so that people are penalised. If you’re not going to lock your bike up, that one crime could result in 10 more crimes up the road.”

Making scooters harder to steal might reduce opportunity, but the lure of valuable secondhand phones remains strong. “Five or six years ago, the police did a lot of work with the mobile phone companies, in particular with Apple, and got security put on the phones,” Payne said. The security measures, including the ability to lock a phone remotely, saw the value of stolen phones plunge. The market has since revived, Payne said, because of demand for secondhand parts such as screens, cases and batteries.

Research by Catch 22, a charity which works with former gang members, indicates that the moped muggers can make £300 in a few minutes.

“People we’ve spoken to see this as almost as a victimless crime and they don’t believe the police care about it,” Catch 22 director Beth Murray said. “It’s done by 14 or 15-year-olds who are proving themselves. They stick to their own patch because they know the streets, or they’ll go to the West End because there will be more tourists and richer people with better phones.”

The robbers either give the phones to their friends or sell them at “corner shops”. “If they steal five or six phones and get £50 for each one it’s a really easy way to make money.”

Although they hope to intimidate people into giving up their phones without a fight, by wearing “scary-looking helmets” and dressing in black, they don’t seem to understand the harm they cause to their victims.

“They have some strange ideas,” Murray said. “They think people can just get a better phone the next day on their insurance. They see it as an alternative to burglary. If they get caught they only get charged with one offence rather than two, for breaking and entering, and theft. The punishment is lower – it seems like a risk-free way of making money to them.”

Police efforts to catch the criminals focus on CCTV and DNA evidence, according to Payne. Fingerprints and DNA are often left on internal parts of scooters which are not usually touched, while partial CCTV images can be pieced together.

Pursuit of suspects is a more difficult topic. Payne simply says that the Met follows national police guidelines on pursuits, which involves making a “dynamic risk assessment” of whether the suspect or the public might be injured during a chase.

In December 2014, an 18-year-old carpenter from Islington, Henry Hicks, died when his moped crashed while being pursued by police, and the Independent Police Complaints Commission decided that four officers should face gross misconduct charges.

Ken Marsh, the chairman of the Metropolitan Police Federation, said: “My colleagues are sick to the back teeth of this. We want to catch criminals, but when you have two young males on a moped, one of them taking their crash helmet off, that’s the end of the chase.

“When you’re out there in the field and that happens, and said chummy falls off said moped, we are hauled through the coals. You’re suspended, your life is just put on hold.

“We need a change in the government’s view on it and we need protection. We’re not asking for carte blanche to run people over. We want an increase in the penalty – five years if you’re caught on a stolen moped. These crimes are horrific but we feel as though they’ve got immunity. We want to see clear guidelines saying that no action will be taken against an officer who pursues someone who is not wearing a crash helmet.”

In the meantime, the moped muggers won’t be going away while the sun shines. “The snatches usually happen between mid-afternoon and dusk,” Payne said. “More people use mopeds to commute in summer, and criminals won’t do it so much in winter. It’s a summertime crime.”

CRIME WAVE

Moped-enabled thefts reported to the Metropolitan police

1 July 2015 to 30 June 2016: 5,145

1 July 2016 to 30 June 2017: 16,158

Thefts of two-wheeled vehicles reported to Metropolitan police

1 July 2015 to 30 June 2016: 11,511

1 July 2016 to 30 June 2017: 14,943

Attempted snatch thefts in England and Wales

April 2015 to March 2016: 123,000

April 2016 to March 2017: 135,000

ONS Crime Survey of England and Wales; Metropolitan police