London has developed a fairly annoying problem involving stolen phones, fast electric bikes, and thieves who have figured out that traffic laws become considerably less relevant when you're already committing crimes. Suspects can slip between cars, hop onto sidewalks, blast through narrow alleys, and disappear into places where a police cruiser has about as much mobility as a refrigerator.
So the Metropolitan Police has arrived at an ironically straightforward solution. The cops bought Sur-Rons.
The Metropolitan Police has expanded its fleet of high-powered Sur-Ron electric bikes from just five machines to 25 as part of its crackdown on phone theft, robbery, and other crimes involving illegally ridden or modified e-bikes. According to the force, the lightweight machines let officers slice through congested streets, negotiate narrow passages, and even tackle staircases that conventional police cars and motorcycles simply can't follow.
This makes the whole situation even funnier. London police have spent considerable effort removing illegal electric two-wheelers from the streets, particularly machines modified for more speed or ridden without the required insurance and registration. More than 2,500 illegal e-bikes and e-scooters were seized during the first seven months of 2026 alone, already surpassing the Met's total for all of 2025.
And now, some of the officers doing the catching now get Sur-Rons themselves.
Unsurprisingly, they're pretty damn useful. On August 17, officers pursued an uninsured e-bike whose rider tried to escape, with the police Sur-Ron reportedly able to match its acceleration until the suspect crashed and was detained. Four days later, another officer chased a fleeing moped through traffic and into a housing estate. The rider eventually ditched the bike and ran, but the officer stayed with him and made the arrest. Police later found a bunch of illegal substances.
The Met says phone theft has fallen by more than 13,000 offenses across London over the past year, while broader neighborhood crime dropped 14% in the 12 months through July. That doesn't mean electric mopeds single-handedly fixed London, obviously. The force is also using drones, targeted policing operations, and other technology to go after organized theft networks.
Still, the irony is pretty hard to ignore. Fast electric motorcycles and e-bikes became attractive to criminals partly because they're light, quick, maneuverable, and exceptionally good at escaping traditional police vehicles. The police response has effectively been to look at those exact advantages and say, yes, we'd like some of that too.
The final punchline is where the money came from. According to the Met, the expanded fleet was partly funded using profits confiscated from criminals. So, in a roundabout way, criminals helped buy the cops their Sur-Rons.
