Brown Unveils Legislation to Combat Cell Phone Theft
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- U.S. Sen. Sherrod Brown today announced legislation to help other cell phone users avoid Cassie Oles' experience.
A 2011 graduate of Youngstown State University, Oles, who lives in Cornersburg, told how she a cheerleading at a YSU basketball game a couple years ago, when she returned to her gym bag only to discover that her cellular phone was missing. After searching in the bleachers and up and down the rows in Beeghly Center, she concluded it had been stolen.
"It was just a horrible experience," she remarked. She had to go to her carrier to replace the phone but because she was in the middle of a contract, replacing the phone cost more.
Brown, who was joined by Oles and Youngstown Police Capt. Jason Simon for a news conference in the city police department's roll call room, announced the Mobile Device Theft Deterrence Act of 2013. The legislation would impose criminal penalties of up to five years for criminals who tamper with the International Mobile Equipment Identity -- or IMEI -- numbers to avoid detection, making stolen phones more difficult to trace.
About 89% of Americans carry a cell phone and about half of them carry some kind of smartphone such as a Blackberry or iPhone, Brown, D-Ohio, said. In many cases, the most valuable item an individual carries is a cell phone.
"And when they're stolen, it's not just the dollar value lost to the owner of the smartphone," Brown said. There are also issues of access to email accounts on the cell phone, bank records and others that can lead to identity theft.
Traveling the state, Brown continued, he hears from individuals and police officers discussing the frequency of such thefts and the help they need. Some police departments report as much as 25% of the crimes they deal with concern cell phones.
"So it's a pretty important issue to a whole lot of people," he said.
Youngstown is "not unlike any city in America" and the city police department sees "hundreds of cases" each year involving cell phone thefts, said Youngstown Police Capt. Jason Simon, commander of YPD's services division. Victims incur hundreds of dollars in expenses not only to replace the devices themselves but also suffer losses due to having to replace "valuable personal content" in the devices, if they are able to at all, he said.
"The world's learned to rely very heavily on this ever expanding scientific boom in cellular technology. As the technology becomes more of an integral pat of our lives, so too does utilizing this equipment for a malevolent criminal purpose," Simon said.
If Brown's legislation passes, law enforcement professionals hope it will send "a strong message to criminals that technological crimes involving cellular phones will not be tolerated, and because of the tremendous loss incurred to the victims would be punished more severely," he said.
Copyright 2013 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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