New York City Crime Rates Are Up - Business Insider

Kim Bhasin / Business Insider

New York City's overall crime rate in 2012 is on track to go up for the first time in two decades, largely because thieves are stealing so many Apple products, The Wall Street Journal reports.

Grand larceny was up 9 percent, a spike officials attributed to theft of personal electronic devices like Apple phones, according to the Journal.

Overall crime was up 3 percent.

If Apple thefts had not gone up in 2012, "we would be experiencing a slight decline in crime citywide," the NYPD's top spokesman Paul Browne told the Journal.

The NYPD seems to be taking steps to tackle smartphone theft, though.

After the new iPhone went on sale in September, the NYPD put officers in 21 stores across the city to help consumers register their phones so cops could track them down if they were stolen, Bloomberg reported.

At the time, the NYPD noted that between Jan. 1 and Sept. 30, more 11,447 Apple products had been stolen in the city ? a 40 percent increase since the same period the prior year, Bloomberg reported.

Browne told Bloomberg in an email that Apple products were a "magnet for crime."

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Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/new-york-city-crime-rates-are-up-2012-12

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