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WASHINGTON Police chiefs everywhere say that smartphone robberies are rocketing. They've offered cash rewards, set up decoy crews in subway stations and urged iPhone owners to be wary.
Now, police in the Washington area and elsewhere are publicly asking regulators and wireless-network operators to allow stolen devices to be shut down remotely through unique identification numbers within them.
That could make it less likely that robbers would point a gun at a victim, knock someone down or grab a smartphone from a Metro rider, officials say, because the device's resale value would plummet. "This is a national issue," D.C. Police Chief Cathy L. Lanier said Friday at a news conference.
Lanier wants wireless companies to use existing technology to let people who report stolen phones ask their service providers to shut them down using IMEI numbers, a unique registration akin to a fingerprint.
Officials are increasingly concerned about crimes involving mobile devices. District police say that about 40 percent of the nearly 500 robberies reported in 2012 involved cellphones, iPods or tablet computers.
In New York, according to the office of Sen. Charles E. Schumer, nearly half of the 16,000 robberies reported to police in the first 10 months of 2011 were of personal technology - mostly cellphones.
