Photo by Samer Farha

Robberies on the Metro system went up by a whopping 50 percent in the last year, Freeman Klopott reports in the Examiner. We’d been seeing a number of warnings about an uptick in Metro crime over the last few months, but this is the first time we’ve seen the numbers for 2009, 805 robberies from January through November, compared to the same time period during the previous year, 538 in 2008. And in 2007? 397. So Metro crime has doubled in just two years.

As you might have guessed, most of these new robberies were cell phone or iPod-related:

Acting transit Chief of Police Jeff Delinski said robbers who snatch electronic devices from unsuspecting riders are the driving force behind the rise in the robberies. As small electronic devices have become prolific in society, so too have the criminals who seek to steal them, Delinski said.