MOBILE phone companies are being asked to help police fight crime.

Detective Inspector Simon Orton, who is based at Consett, discovered that by dialling in a simple code into their phones, owners could call up a security number exclusive to each handset.

The number can then be passed to police and used as evidence to prosecute thieves and help return stolen handsets to their rightful owners.

Det Insp Orton's colleagues asked phone companies to contact their customers in the force area to tell them of the security code, but were disappointed with the response.

He said that if customers kept a record of their phone's individual number and passed it to police the chance of recovering stolen phones was dramatically increased.

Armed with the idea, Derwentside's community safety specialist, Sergeant Dave Scott, invited phone companies to send text messages to owners alerting them to the value of taking the measure.

"With the exception of Orange, which already keeps the details on behalf of owners, the major companies seemed to drag their feet. Frankly, their reaction was very disappointing. They seemed pre-occupied with selling phones and showed little interest in security."

Despite the reaction, Derwentside police decided to push the idea in any case and have printed 10,000 leaflets to be circulated to mobile phone shops, schools, surgeries and other public buildings.

Sgt Scott said: "When I spoke to the companies they promised to get back to me but no one has. Hopefully, they will rethink and respond positively."

A spokesman for Vodafone said it recently launched a six-point plan to combat the crime nationally, including a scheme to ensure that Sim (subscriber identification module) cards - which are the chips inside phones that tell a network who owns the handset - would not work in other operators' phones.

BT Cellnet said the company already advised new customers to keep a record of their individual phone number. No one from One2One responded to inquiries from The Northern Echo.

To bring up the security, or IMEI, number on a handset owners have to press star, hash, 06, hash and the digits appear on the screen.