Met Police Launch New Bike-Mounted Flying Squad
The new Met Police unit will fight fire with fire, as they take to London’s streets on electric dirt bikes in a bid to combat phone snatching and other crimes
A new Met Police unit has been created to help reduce the number of phone snatchings going on in the city, as well as to combat other gang-related crimes.
Statistics highlight that 91,000 phones are being snatched on London’s streets by one method or another, meaning that somebody in the capital loses their phone every six minutes. Many of these thefts are carried out by either criminals riding bicycles or electric motorbikes. The Met has been tasked with reducing it in 2025, and its plan for curbing the crime is to fight fire with fire, as a new electric motorcycle riding ‘Flying Squad’ is launched.
The Met has added five specially adapted Sur-Ron Ultra Bee electric dirt bikes to its inventory. The hope now is that the bikes can help to reduce the number of phones being snatched by using the machines. The bikes have been adapted to suit the task, and the officers riding them have undergone specialist training. It’s also been confirmed that tactical contact (whereby the officer can use the bike to take down an assailant either while they are riding another bike or on foot) has also been given the green light.
The Telegraph reports that most stolen mobile phones are handed off to criminal gangs, with many being hacked to download personal data relating to banking and passwords. It goes on to state that phones snatched in the capital have ended up in shops as far away as Hong Kong.
Speaking about London’s phone theft ‘epidemic’, a Met spokesperson said:
“Robbery and theft is invasive, frustrating and it’s simply not acceptable in our city. That’s why we are using data and intelligence to deploy officers into key hotspot areas. These are a mix of uniformed officers to deter criminals, and plain clothed officers to catch offenders.
“We encourage people to report as soon as they can whenever they have been a victim of robbery or theft, to increase the chances of us catching offenders.
“In addition to keeping Londoners safe, we’re also using technology and data to build intelligence and track stolen phones. We’re then using this data to develop our intelligence about common locations for where stolen phones are kept, helping us to recover devices.”
The bike’s being ridden by the officers cost around £5,000 in civilian trim, and include features like long-travel suspension, disc brakes, and knobbly tyres. They are powered by a 74V, 55Ah battery pack which is linked to 8kW electric motor which can propel the bike to around 60 to 70mph and accelerate it to 50mph in three seconds.
Simon (AKA Toad) has been working within the motorcycle industry for more than twelve years, and a member of the motorcyclist family since birth. Growing up around British-built single and twins, it was inevitable that a life on two wheels was on the cards, from a very early age!
