Ashley Roberts had an iPod tucked in her pocket when three teens surrounded her in her Scarborough neighbourhood in Toronto.
“Let me see your iPod,” one girl demanded, snatching the gadget from Ms. Roberts's pocket. “I think I'm going to take this,” she gloated, tugging it so hard she pulled the buds from Ms. Roberts's ears.
Ms. Roberts, 17, didn't put up a fight. “I would have gotten put in the hospital,” she said quietly this week.
The incident happened two years ago, and the iPod belonged to Ms. Roberts's friend, 17-year-old Christina McPherson. Despite what happened to Ms. Roberts, Ms. McPherson is defiant: Under “no circumstances” would she give up a gadget that holds 6,000 painstakingly acquired songs, even if it would reduce her chances of being mugged.
“I'd rather be stabbed than give up my iPod,” she said.
This week, a trial began in Ottawa that has heightened Canadian parents' concerns about sending their children and teens out of the house with expensive electronic devices such as iPods.
A youth is charged in the stabbing death of 22-year-old Michael Oatway, an Ottawa man allegedly killed for his girlfriend's iPod on a city bus.
Police call iPod assaults an epidemic, not unlike the spate of violent swarmings in the 1990s where the prizes were expensive running shoes and jackets. But iPods are more valued because one size fits all.
“They're ubiquitous,” Vancouver Police Constable Tim Fanning said. Nearly every young person has one or wants one. Users are easy to spot, sporting the white ear buds, often referred to as “mug me” earphones.
“For a thief, it's like a crow seeing something shiny,” Constable Fanning said.
Police and transit authorities have issued guidelines to iPod wearers, urging them to keep their iPods out of sight and to buy different styles of earphones.
At a SkyTrain station in Vancouver, a sign urges iPod wearers to remove their earphones in and around the station. The warning appears to have little effect. On an afternoon this week, throngs of people marched in and out of the station, with white strings dangling from their ears.
Researchers in the United States even argue that iPod usage has sparked an “iCrime” wave there.
A 2007 study by the Urban Institute in Washington has attributed a spike in violent crime south of the border to iPod usage.
“The rise in violent offending and explosion in the sales of iPods and other portable media devices is more than coincidental,” the report said.
“We propose that over the past two years, America may have experienced an iCrime wave.”
The Urban Institute study said that in 2005 the United States reported its first increase in violent crime in 12 years. That trend continued into 2006.
“At the same time that violent crime rates began to rise, America's streets filled with millions of people visibly wearing, and being distracted by, expensive electronic gear,” the study says.
Canada, by contrast, did not experience a similar rise in violent crime, according to Statistics Canada.
But that doesn't mean iPod thefts and muggings aren't common in Canada.
Police blotters are filled with tales of people being swarmed and mugged for their iPods and cellphones. Hot iPods are bought and sold at a deep discount on schoolyards.
Outside Toronto's Central Technical Institute recently, some students boast that their iPods cost them between $10 and $30.
Many are stolen, in some cases from classmates.
Holding an aqua blue Shuffle Mini between her long pink nails outside the school, 16-year-old Desiree Bowen said some of her friends steal iPods and sell them to their friends for $20.
“It's fast money,” said Ms. Bowen, who generally keeps her iPod concealed in her pocket and occasionally switches the white ear buds for black ones.
Her friend, Abraham Shah, a towering, ebullient quarterback, whips out his $10 iPod. At that price, it's likely stolen. The seller thoughtfully cleared the previous owner's playlist.
Mr. Shah, 15, says it's the Grade 9 students who typically get mugged, largely because they flash their goods around.
David Anderson, a Grade 9 student, brings his Nokia N95 smartphone to school: Equipped with WiFi, a five megapixel camera and a GPS system, the camera cost Mr. Anderson's older brother nearly $1,000 two years ago.
