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Location isn’t that accurate, the phone was probably just traded in a car or in the street.
So the police get a call from the phone owner “yeah my phone location is on X street”, the police get down there, then what? Let’s say it was in a house, it’s rows of houses in London, do they knock on every door there and ask “hey have you stolen a phone?” in hopes the guy admits it? It could have been traded already so a description of someone might not be good enough.
I just read the whole article and it just re-iterates what I have just said. They recover a small amount of the phones because of how quick they move them after they have been stolen. It even says that the criminals “wrap stolen phones in tinfoil to block its signal”.
It’s easy to sit in your chair and say “just go over there and arrest them”, without even taking a moment to understand the logistics of tackling it.
They are doing their jobs. but with limited manpower they have chosen not to stretch themselves even thinner by physically chasing a phone. As the article says, they try to be smarter about it.