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Crime is on the rise in New York, and the mayor blames Apple.
Mayor Michael Bloomberg said the slight increase in the city’s crime index was down to more iPads and iPhones being half-inched, NYTimes.com reports, via 9to5Mac. The Police Department recorded 3,484 more major crimes in 2012 than in 2011. This stat includes felonies as serious as murder and grand larceny, as well as robbery. There were 3,890 more Apple products stolen than in 2011, according to the donut-chomping number-crunchers down at police HQ.
If it wasn’t for thefts of Apple devices, crime would actually have been on the wane. Marc La Vorgna, the mayor’s press secretary, said: “If you just took away the jump in Apple, we’d be down for the year.”
During the mayor’s weekly radio show, Bloomberg said Apple products were thieves’ first choice, though he admitted he wasn’t factoring in thefts of rival devices like Samsung phones in his figures. So maybe he’s not being completely fair.
Mayor Bloomberg had some advice for anyone worried their idevice was being eyed up by ne’er-do-wells: keep it out of sight, and so close you can feel it. “Put it in a pocket in sort of a more body-fitting, tighter clothes, that you can feel if it was — if somebody put their hand in your pocket, not just an outside coat pocket,” he said.
It’s only recently that thieves have started targeting Apple owners, according to the mayor’s press man. “The proliferation of people carrying expensive devices around is so great,” La Vorgna said. “It’s something that’s never had to be dealt with before.”
How do you feel about whipping out a high-end gadget in public? With handsets like the Nexus 4 making smart phones more affordable, and hence more prevalent, is the threat from thieves greater or lesser? Let me know in the comments, or on our Facebook page.
