MPD: Hold On To Your Smartphone, Southwest

Got an iPhone? Maybe not for long, if you're careless.

That's the message from the Minneapolis Police Department, who say smartphone thefts have spiked across the city, including in Southwest Minneapolis. So far, police say there no specific trends have emerged in location and time of the crimes, but they tend to occur in the morning, or while the phone's owner is looking the other way.

"Some smartphones have been stolen right out of the victim’s hands while the victim walked down the street or waited at a bus stop," police said in a written statement. "Other times the victim had the phone sitting on a table in an establishment and a suspect walked by and stole it."

Police are urging iPhone owners to turn on their "Find My iPhone" feature, and encouraging other phone owners to activate similar phone tracking functions, if they have them.

Other steps you can take to reduce the risk of theft are:

• Record your serial number! This information, when provided for a police report, will go into a nationwide database and can increase the likelihood of the phone being returned.
• Before anything happens, install or activate a function to find your phone if lost or stolen. See below for details.Remember – if you don’t do this beforehand, you lose the chance for this extra step.
• Report a stolen phone. Provide any information on location of the phone, serial number, etc, in the report. Call 911. In some circumstances, 911 may send you to 311 to make a theft report.
• Pay attention to your surroundings. Many of these phones have been stolen when the victims have been distracted while using it.
• Call 911 on suspicious activity.
• If you witness a theft/robbery, call 911 and stay around or provide contact information so officers can get a suspect description from you or investigators can follow up.