Turns out, if your phone gets stolen, you might be able to negotiate with your mugger. At least that’s a strategy that worked for San Francisco Supervisor Scott Wiener last Friday night as dusk was falling around 5:30pm.

The local politician told Ars that he was walking down 16th St. from his home in the Castro toward a nearby BART station. He was waiting for a red light at 16th and Valencia when he stopped to take his iPhone out of his pocket to check his calendar for a brief moment. All of a sudden, a woman, flanked by two men appeared.

"She grabbed the phone out of my hand," he said.

"And I repeatedly told her I wanted my phone back and then she said if you give me money, we'll give you your phone back. They initially demanded $500, and I said no, and got it down to $200 and then we got a half a block up, to the Wells Fargo ATM so I could take out money, and I also wanted to get them in front of video."

With the cash in hand, Wiener wanted the woman to hand over the phone before he exchanged the cash. She, in turn, refused to transfer the phone until he’d given up the bills. They turned to a nearby bystander who acted as a trusted spur-of-the-moment third party. She took both the money and the phone and then handed them off.

"And then after that they left, and there was a Wells Fargo security guard, and she and I went into the bank to call the police," he added. "We came outside and hailed the police car that happened to be going by and they came and took the report and ultimately in the evening they were able to apprehend the woman."

He said he didn’t know the suspect’s name but noted, "as far as I know she's still in custody."

The woman did not have a weapon but brandished what she claimed to be a canister of mace and also "indicated that one of the guys had a gun, but no one showed anything."

Wiener, who is currently running for California State Senate, said this was the first time he had ever been mugged in his 20 years of living in San Francisco.

"It's not a pleasant situation to go through. This is the first time in my life that I've been victimized like this, but I wanted to get my phone back, and I wanted to get them on video," he said, noting the men remain at large.

"Whether I ever get the $200 back, it's worth it to get her off the streets."

This operation sounds almost textbook: according to an article published in 2014 in SF Weekly, "it takes three people to commit the perfect smartphone robbery."

Two of them identify a distracted, vulnerable person — usually a woman, police say — with a phone in tow. The third one carries a gun. He's the "safety" or "trigger man," whose role is to intervene only if the victim puts up a fight. In most robbery stakeouts, the trigger man stands by and watches while the other two ambush their victim and run. That lowers the risk, and raises the payoff: If the thieves are caught, they'll be charged with petty theft rather than armed robbery.

Earlier this year, a California state law went into effect requiring that all smartphones sold in the state must have a remote kill switch. In February 2015, San Francisco’s district attorney said such thefts were down 22 percent as a result.