Camden Council candidate has phone snatched seconds after fly-tipping selfie

A Camden Council hopeful had his phone stolen by a motorcyclist – while in the process of reporting fly-tipped waste.

Henry Newman, the Tory candidate for Highgate ward in 2018’s council election, had just taken a photograph of himself next to the litter in Chetwynd Road, Dartmouth Park, when a thief snatched his iPhone.

He told the Ham&High that the theft on Sunday evening was “quite shocking”, but “not particularly violent”.

“I thought he was going to run me over,” he said.

“He did grab the phone quite forcefully, but he drove off immediately. Even though several people witnessed it, there’s nothing you can really do.”

He added: “The police and my phone provider both told me there’s been a huge rise in these thefts. It seemed well-planned – there was cloth over the number plate and it was done quite professionally.”

Mr Newman, however, said that all his photographs – including precious snaps of his newborn nephew – were backed up on the cloud, so the damage was less serious than it might have been.

But he added: “It makes you more circumspect about walking around with your phone.”

Mr Newman has taken dozens of pictures – which he posts to his Twitter account – of litter he finds on Camden streets.

But he said the theft is “absolutely not going to stop” him from continuing his campaign to highlight rubbish in the borough.

He added: “I just find it quite ironic that I was in the middle of reporting a crime when I became a victim of a crime.”