In Philadelphia, hidebound ways of confronting iPhone thefts let thrive illicit networks to distribute stolen cellphones. Detectives treated each robbery as an unrelated street crime — known as “apple picking” — rather than a vast scheme with connected channels used by thieves to sell the stolen phones.
And in Nashville, investigators had no meaningful statistics on a nasty new swindle of the digital age: The “cheating husband” email scheme. In it, anonymous extortionists mass email large numbers of men, threatening to unmask their infidelities. The extortionists have no idea if the men have done anything wrong, but enough of them are guilty, it turns out, that some pay up, sometimes with Bitcoin.
Each case demonstrates how the tools used to fight crime and measure crime trends in the United States are outdated. Even as certain kinds of crimes are declining, others are increasing — yet because so many occur online and have no geographic borders, local police departments face new challenges not only fighting them, but keeping track of them. Politicians often tout crime declines without acknowledging the rise of new cyber crimes.
