iPhone Robberies In LA: Police Advise Against White Earbuds (VIDEOS)

Given this latest crime report, you may want to invest in some black (albeit, less cool) earbuds.

The Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) said Wednesday that there has been an uptick in robberies of iPhones and iPods across the city, CBS reports. What tips robbers off to the fact that it's Apple? The white earbuds.

The LAPD has responded to three thefts in Venice Beach in the past week, including one that got physical. The police said that the trend is city-wide and some of the many second-hand Apple products on Craigslist are stolen.

The news comes after the AT&T, Verizon Wireless, T-Mobile and Sprint announced Tuesday they will create a central database to track stolen phones and prevent them from being reactivated, the Los Angeles Times reports.

The database is supposed to be available for most phones by Nov. 30. In the meantime, the LAPD advised that phone owners enable GPS on their devices.

“We had an arrest that was related to one of the Venice Beach robberies, where three suspects were taken into custody about a mile and a half away from the scene and that was because we had the ability to track the phone,” LAPD Sergeant Jon Peters told CBS.

If your model doesn't have the tracking feature or you feel nervous about being tracked, the iPhone app "Find My iPhone" has helped LA police track down robbers, KTLA reports in the video below.