Quicker check for stolen mobile phones

The National Policing Improvement Agency (NPIA) has developed a much quicker process to enable police officers on the front line to directly access the National Mobile Phone Register (NMPR) to help identify victims of mobile phone theft.

The register, run by the Metropolitan Police Service (MPS), holds descriptions of stolen and lost mobiles and is the only system in the country that allows police officers to identify them,
Currently, officers have to go through their force control room to request a search of the NMPR as it can only be accessed via the internet – a time-consuming process that can take up to 20 minutes to determine whether a phone has been stolen.

Mobile phone theft is a significant problem – 350,000 stolen mobile phones from across the UK are added to the NMPR every year and nearly 80,000 offences of mobile phone theft have been committed in London alone over the past 12 months.

Nationally, around 25,000 searches of the register are carried out by officers every month, with an average match rate of 25 per cent. It is hoped that easier access will enable more officers to use the service, increasing the chance of more stolen mobiles being identified and returned to their owners.
Detective Chief Superintendent Mick McNally, from the MPS’s Territorial Policing Command, said: “For the first time, frontline officers can now obtain instantaneous results of searches on suspected stolen mobile phones. The figures of 50,000-plus stolen phones a year being located and identified throughout the UK will further increase with this new Police National Computer (PNC) facility.”

To make the system more efficient, the NPIA worked with a supplier to integrate the NMPR into the PNC, giving officers instant access to information on stolen and lost mobiles from their handheld computers.