I remember sometime in the late 1990′s when daily newspaper headlines constantly alerted us to the fact that kids in bad neighborhoods were being murdered for their sneakers. The point of these headlines was to highlight the senselessness of gang violence and other violent crimes. I was reminded of this recently when I did research into a rash of reports about people who have been assaulted for their mobile phones.

Just a cursory glance through the mobile phone news throughout the United States and the UK reveals that there are people all around the world who are getting physically attacked for the purpose of robbing their mobile phones. It’s hard to say in some of these cases whether the victim was assaulted for another reason and then the phone theft was secondary to the crime but it’s clear in at least a few of these instances that robbery of the phone was the sole motivation for the attack.

That’s some scary stuff. It reminds us of just how senseless most crime is. Phones are not that valuable and they’re easily accessible to almost anyone and yet we’ve got these crimes where mobile phones are valued as property to be stolen. It’s frightening and the reports are eye-opening as to what’s going on in the world around us.

Check out my whole article titled Today’s Thieves Want Your Mobile Phones.

Tags: cell phones, crime, law, legal, mobile phones, news, robbery, Technology, theft, violence

Quick – think of the ways that you could use your phone to catch a criminal. Obviously if you witnessed a crime in action then you could call the police with your mobile phone to report the crime. And if you were a victim in a situation such as a kidnapping then you might text to get out of trouble and get your captor caught. But did you know that there are quite a few other ways that criminals are caught because of cell phones?

Take a look at these ten ways cell phones catch criminals. You might be surprised by a few of them. For example, did you know that cell phones emit a certain smell and that the same dogs that are used to find drugs can be used to find cell phones in certain illegal situations? There is some strange stuff going on out there in the world of fighting crime.

Now, get creative … I’d love to hear your thoughts on the most creative ways that we, as average citizens, could use cell phones to catch criminals in the act so that they would be caught. Share in the comments …

Tags: criminal, criminal justice, justice, law, legal, mobile, phones, Technology, Wireless