Gulf War hero traces wife's stolen iPhone... but British police are 'too busy' to arrest thief

Useless yet again. Speech crimes are all they are interested in

Gulf War hostage John Nichol has condemned police for failing to confront the thief who stole his wife's iPhone – despite being told exactly where it is.

The £500 phone's tracking software instantly revealed its location and the former RAF Tornado navigator passed the information to detectives.

But they were apparently 'too busy' to retrieve the phone. Instead, they bombarded Mr Nichol and his wife with phone calls asking them to fill in forms and offering victim support.

Yesterday Mr Nichol, 48, who was shot down during the 1991 Gulf War, held prisoner and paraded on Iraqi TV, was incredulous at their response to the disappearance of the phone, as his wife attended a meeting at her London office. 'My wife lost – I'm going to use the word lost because we don't know what happened to it – her iPhone in a meeting last week and reported it to police,' he said.

'The thing about this is you can put a tracker on it. So we watched my wife's iPhone getting out of the meeting, going along the road, getting on the Tube, getting out at Clapham Junction and making its way to a house in Clapham. 'It has been bleeping merrily to say, “I'm here”.'

Speaking on LBC Radio, he said police had been 'too busy' to follow up the information. They can't chase down a stolen – sorry missing – iPhone,' he said.

'What they can do is phone you at least ten times by different people, filling in reports, asking for crime numbers, asking for the personal number for the phone in case they find it in six months' time.

'Meanwhile, it has stayed in the same house in Clapham telling us where it is.

The phone was taken while Mr Nichol's wife Suzannah, a businesswoman awarded an MBE in 2005, attended a meeting last week.

She is the chief executive of an organisation that represents skilled building contractors.

Mr Nichol, of Ware, Hertfordshire, said he was appalled when police officers failed to act, despite being handed such detailed information about the phone's location. Many smartphones now have built-in tracking devices designed to help the owner if they lose it. Users can log in to their tracking account using a computer or an app on another device such as an iPad and view its location, transmitted by satellite, on a map.

Mr Nichol said police seemed more interested in form-filling than crime solving.

'Every time we have been contacted by the police, we have had a crime officer, we have had somebody asking us if we are bothered about crime, we have had someone who needs to fill in a report,' he said.

Last night a Met spokesman said officers hoped to reach a 'positive conclusion' in the case soon. He said the loss of the phone was reported on April 3.

He said phones with tracking devices had more chance of being recovered but added: 'GPS positioning is not always 100 per cent accurate – as it can usually only pinpoint location to a certain degree. For example in the case of a street, the location might include several houses or buildings.'

Thefts of mobile phones are rocketing, with more than 900 handsets stolen in the UK every day. Smartphones are the biggest target because they can fetch hundreds of pounds on the black market.

Original report here




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