Measures needed against epidemic of cellphone thefts, police chief says

Stolen cellphones has become a common problem at GTA high schools.

KAREN BLEIER/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

As Toronto police scramble to deal with cellphone robberies plaguing area high schools, American regulators are adopting new measures to discourage cellphone theft south of the border.
The U.S. Federal Communications Commission, along with major wireless carriers AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile, announced plans Tuesday to create a national database of identification numbers that are unique to each phone.
With that list, cellular carriers will be able to permanently disable a phone once it has been stolen, vastly decreasing its street value. Until now, U.S. carriers have only been disabling so-called “SIM” cards, which can be swapped in and out, creating a black market for stolen phones.
Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair, who belongs to a North American association of police chiefs that urged the U.S. to introduce the database, told the Toronto Police Services Board last week similar measures are needed here to combat the epidemic of phone theft.
Cellphone manufacturers need to add technology to phones so that they can be disabled if they are stolen, he added.
RELATED: Cellphone companies in U.S. agree to disable stolen phones for good, no plans in Canada
“The technology exists, but they choose not to do it,” Blair told the board at a meeting last week. “I think we should be advocating for that as well.”
Blair was responding to concerns raised by Councillor Frances Nunziata, parents and educators who said students need more protection from cellphone theft.
Nunziata (Ward 11 York South-Weston) said her office “gets complaints every day that kids leaving school are being attacked and their cellphones and iPods stolen. And they’re being beaten up.”
One of the latest incidents involved a boy who needed medical attention after he was tackled and roughed up when he tried to run away, she added.
Other incidents involved pushing and shoving, said Carmine Settino, principal of Chaminade College School, a Catholic high school in neighbouring Ward 12 near Lawrence Ave. W. and Black Creek Dr. Students there have been targeted while walking on quiet streets or taking shortcuts through a ravine, he said.
Blair told the board cellphone theft is on the rise city-wide and not just confined to Nunziata’s ward.
In March, police in 23 Division launched a cellphone registry after violent robberies by knife and gunpoint occurred in North Etobicoke. Residents are encouraged to register their International Mobile Equipment Identification number, unique to every phone, with police. The numbers will be used in later investigations to ensure phone resellers are complying with the law.
Blair recently attended a meeting of the Major Cities Chiefs Association, which was reportedly behind the push for change in the U.S. Blair is vice-president of the association, which is an affiliation of 70 police chiefs from large U.S. and Canadian cities.
In February, the association approved a resolution requesting the U.S. Federal Communications Commission disable stolen mobile devices.
A spokesperson for the Canadian Association of Chiefs of Police said this issue has not been tabled and it has not been raised with government here.
In Canada, individual carriers can block any phone after it’s been reported lost or stolen, but they do not share that information with their competitors.
“Each carrier keeps track of their own networks, but to create a national database, it would be incredibly complex, and probably incredibly costly,” said Marc Choma, spokesman for the Canadian Wireless Telecommunications Association, which represents wireless carriers.
While the association would be open to exploring discussions with carriers about such a national database, Choma said there has been no such push so far.
“Who would create the database and who would be responsible for maintaining it?” he added, noting it would also raise privacy concerns.
Under the current Canadian system, if you report a phone stolen to your own carrier, another individual would be blocked from activating that phone with that carrier. However, if that phone is taken to a different carrier, and the user says he got it from a friend, it could potentially be activated because there is no way of knowing if it has been reported stolen or lost.
With more than 26 million wireless users in Canada and about two dozen service providers, thousands of phones are activated each day, Choma said.
As well, prepaid phones and SIM cards can be bought without collecting any information on users.
In some cases, such as passing a used phone to a family member or friend, the activations are perfectly legitimate. Consumers should also protect the information on their smart phones which often carry sensitive data, by setting up passwords, he said. Some carriers can erase all data from phones in the event of a loss.
Rogers spokeswoman Leigh-Ann Popek said customers are urged to notify the carrier in cases where phones are lost or stolen, though any reporting to law enforcement must be done by the customer.
Popek added Rogers has a free app called Phone Finder that allows people to register and track their device online.
The Canadian Radio-television Telecommunications Commission said no proposal for a national database is currently under consideration, but it has asked the public for comments on the state of wireless competition, so it may come up.
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With files from Bloomberg News