Smartphone, mobile tech thefts take off at MSP airport

Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport has seen a sharp rise in thefts as more people travel with more mobile technology, and officials say they need travelers' help fighting the trend.

Thefts are up about 17 percent in 2015 compared to the same time last year. That's on top of a 42 percent jump between 2013 and 2014, when nearly 300 items were stolen.

Police say this isn't just a matter of someone forgetting their iPad at home and thinking someone stole it. These are reports that police have looked into and have reason to believe someone took something that doesn't belong to them.

"Usually, if we mark it as a theft, we have seen the theft on video," said Sgt. John Christenson with the airport police's special investigations unit. "They have 4,000 cameras out there, and there isn't much of the airport you can't see on camera."

Christenson says they often see the same story.

"People that don't fly a lot. They can get stressed out" and travelers rushing to catch a flight or a meal leave behind laptop chargers and other easy-to-forget technology, he said. "In some of those cases those items get turned in, and in other cases, people steal them."

The culprits cover the spectrum of people at the airport. Some might be travelers that have picked up a laptop left behind after it was removed from its case to get through a TSA checkpoint. Restaurant and car rental employees have found devices left behind and taken them home. Another hot spot: restrooms. People take their phones out while they're on the toilet. They leave them in a stall and someone else picks them up.

Gene Hill, a retired postal worker from Duluth who drives a Skyline Shuttle van regularly to the airport and the Mall of America, recalled how his brand new iPhone 6 got lifted.

One night in June as he pulled up outside Terminal 1 to drop off passengers, he stuck his phone in the cup holder beside his seat and jumped out.

"As soon as I said goodbye, wished my customers safe travels, I hopped back in the van, boom, I noticed right away my cell phone was gone," he recalled during a layover in Bloomington late Tuesday night. "I knew where I had put it and it wasn't there. I immediately looked on the floor, I looked in my bag to see. Hey, it's gone."

He called 911, and airport police tracked down the culprit, red-handed, at one of the airport's light rail stations. It was one of his passengers. "I think within 25 minutes I was on my way," Hill said. "Isn't that amazing?"

Airport officials emphasize that given the 35 million passengers passing through the airport each year — nearly the population of California — MSP may be among the safest places in Minnesota.

Still, they say a little extra caution is the best protection for phones, tablets and laptops.

Mind your stuff at the airport

The Metropolitan Airports Commission wants passengers to take a few extra moments to double check their belongings as they move through the airport. The agency advises:

• Check all the bins before you leave security. Sometimes people will forget an item that's either in the corner of one of the bins or they'll use multiple bins and forget to check them all.

• If you use electronics at restaurants or gate areas, look at the seats around to make sure you've recollected everything before you board the flight.

• On board, don't put electronics in the seat back pockets. People think they will remember them but very often they don't and they're still there when they get off the plane.

• If you're checking messages or working on social media in the restroom, check the stall and sink before you leave. It sounds odd, but there are a lot of phones and electronics that are left in restrooms.

• If you have a geolocation feature on your phone or tablet that can ping its location, turn it on. Police can use that to locate your phone if it's lost or stolen.