Robin’s arrest report (Picture: Robin Lee)

A commuter has spoken about the moment he was arrested and marched away in handcuffs for stealing ≈0.052p in electricity while on a train.

London-based artist Robin Lee plugged his phone in on a London Overground train on Friday and was spotted by a community support officer, stealing the ≈0.052p of electricity.

She accused him of ‘abstracting [≈0.052p of] electricity’ and pointed him out to some nearby police officers, Robin told Metro.co.uk

MORE: Woman crashes her car while pleasuring herself with a sex toy


He said:

The officers got hold of me by each arm and put me in handcuffs – they were really aggressive and over the top. They put me in the cage in the back of the van and started going through my stuff – they even checked underneath my belt and everything.

Robin called the incident ‘ridiculous’ (Picture: Robin Lee)

MORE: Mum let 13-year-old daughter’s boyfriend, 41, move into her room

Back at Camden Road station he was eventually de-arrested for stealing ≈0.052p of electricity but then re-arrested for ‘unacceptable behaviour’ before being released without charge.



Robin was allowed to collect his stuff and leave, with no charges brought against him.

However, we’ve set up a JustGiving page with a target of £5 so that around 10,000 Londoners will be able to charge their phones.

(Of course, we’re donating any money raised to charity).

How much did Robin cost TfL? The current average price of a kWh (kilowatt-hour) is about 9.5 pence in the UK. If you were to completely drain and recharge an average mobile phone every day for a year it would use up about 2,000 watt hours (or 2kWh) of energy. This would cost you 19p, but Mr Lee only charged his phone up once – and we don’t even know if he managed to charge it up fully. Therefore the absolute most Mr would have cost the train company in electricity is roughly 0.052 pence.

A British Transport Police spokesman said: ‘We were called to Camden Road London Overground station on Friday, July 10, to a report of a man becoming aggressive when challenged by a PCSO about his use of a plug socket on board an Overground train.

‘Shortly after 3.30pm, a 45-year-old man from Islington was arrested on suspicion of abstracting electricity, for which he was de-arrested shortly after.’

A transport for London spokeswoman said plugs on London Overground trains are clearly marked with stickers which say they are for ‘cleaners use only and not for public use’.