Cellphone thefts on the rise

Calling to report one of the increasingly common theft crimes in U.S. cities could be difficult. That's because the crime is smartphone theft.

In Los Angeles, cellphone thefts, which now account for more than a quarter of the city's robberies, are up 27% from this time a year ago, police said. In San Francisco, which has been particularly hard hit, nearly half of all thefts this year were cellphone-related, police said, with most occurring on bustling transit lines. Though some experts put annual cellphone losses in the billions of dollars, there is no precise figure on how many devices are stolen each year. But the problem has become so visible that it has caught the attention of lawmakers and regulators seeking to take the profit out of cellphone theft.