ThummerPhone Theft Statistics by City, With Sources (2026)
Phone theft numbers get repeated a lot, often without a source. This page collects figures we could trace to police, government or news reports of official data, says what each one measures, and links to where we found it.
They can't be compared city to city: some count offenses, some police reports, some phones, and some all thefts. We've labeled each.
London
London publishes the clearest phone-specific figures we found, and they're falling.
- 71,867 phone theft and robbery offenses in 2025, down from 81,439 in 2024, according to the Metropolitan Police. These are offenses, not phones.
- 39,793 offenses from January to August 2026, down from 49,136 in the same months of 2025. The Met calls this a four-year low and says offenses in Westminster, the capital's busiest tourist area, have fallen by almost 50 percent.
- About 2.4% of stolen phones were recovered. Of 587,498 phones stolen in London from 2017 to February 27, 2024 (excluding the City of London), 13,998 were recovered, according to Freedom of Information data reported by ITV News in 2026. The percentage is our arithmetic.
- 0.9% of "theft from the person" cases in the year to December 2025 ended with a suspect identified and dealt with, and 6.9% of personal robbery cases, per the same ITV report. Those categories include more than phones.
City of London (the Square Mile, a separate police force): reports of phone snatching fell by nearly 30% in the first four months of 2025 compared with a year earlier. The City of London Police also said in 2025 that around £7,000 a day was defrauded from victims following the theft of their phone, and that fewer than half of the more than 1,000 phones it recovered over two years were returned, because owners couldn't be found.
England and Wales, by survey: around 78,000 people had a phone or bag snatched between March 2023 and March 2024, up 153% on the year before, according to Crime Survey for England and Wales figures reported by ITV News in September 2024. It's an older figure and includes bags. For where thefts cluster, see our London guide.
Brazil: São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro
Brazil publishes two national numbers, and they're easy to mix up.
- 830,890 phones were stolen or robbed in Brazil in 2025, about 95 an hour, according to the Fórum Brasileiro de Segurança Pública's 2026 yearbook, as reported by CNN Brasil.
- 792,284 police reports of phone theft and robbery were filed in 2025, down from 855,113 in 2024. One report can cover more than one phone, which is why this is lower.
São Paulo city: 161,666 phones stolen or robbed in 2025, about 442 a day, compared with 163,437 in 2024, according to São Paulo state security data reported by Folhapress via Acessa in January 2026. Statewide, the total fell 5.9%, with robberies down and thefts up.
Rio de Janeiro state: 72,228 reports of phone theft and robbery in 2025, close to 200 a day, counting only cases registered at police stations, according to the state's Instituto de Segurança Pública as reported by SBT News. Most were thefts without violence (46,603) rather than robberies (25,625). Our São Paulo and Rio guide covers where and how.
Spanish-speaking Latin America
- Peru: 1,462,487 phones were reported stolen nationwide in 2025, down 6.8% from 1,569,126 in 2024, according to the telecom regulator OSIPTEL, as reported by the official newspaper El Peruano in January 2026. The figures come from Renteseg, a register of reports that users make to their mobile operators, so they aren't police complaints. See our Lima and Cusco guide.
- Bogotá: phone theft fell 9% from January 1 to July 13, 2026, compared with the same period of 2025, according to police statistics (SIEDCO) cited by the City of Bogotá. That release gave no count; an earlier city release reported 3,096 cases from January through the first week of February 2026. Our Bogotá and Medellín guide has more.
- Buenos Aires: the city doesn't break out phones. Its preliminary 2025 crime data recorded 5,587 muggings on motorcycles, down 3% from 5,758, and total robberies down 27%, as reported by the Buenos Aires Times in February 2026. Motorcycle snatching is the subject of our motochorros guide.
New York City
We found no official phone-specific count for New York. The closest figure covers robbery and grand larceny patterns involving mopeds and scooters, a common way phones are snatched from the curb. By the end of 2024, the NYPD had identified such patterns covering 991 complaints, up from 284 at the end of 2022. From January through May 2025 there were 93, compared with 454 in the same months of 2024, according to the NYC Mayor's Office. The release doesn't say how many involved phones. See our New York guide.
Numbers we don't use
Some widely shared figures didn't hold up when we checked, or we couldn't find their source:
- "792,284 phones stolen in Brazil." That's the number of police reports; the phone count is 830,890.
- National U.S. phone theft totals. We haven't found a current official count.
What the numbers do and don't tell you
Most of these figures are falling. That's real progress, but every figure counts only what was reported, and many thefts never are. None tells you your personal risk on a given street. What they do show is that a phone held out near the curb, in a crowd or at a station is still a common target.
If you're traveling, set up your phone before you go with our Android theft protection explainer, and keep our first-10-minutes checklist handy. Some people add a tool for the moment of the grab, such as a wrist strap or an app; Thummer, for example, locks an Android phone within five seconds when the owner's thumb lifts off an on-screen bubble.
The bottom line
Quote a phone theft number only with its source and what it counts. If you're citing this page, link to the original source too; we update these figures as new data comes out.