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Apples are picked on crowded subways, in quiet parks, on busy street corners, in loud bars. Apples are picked while people are talking on the phone, the picker dashing past and doing the deed in midstride.

It has gotten so bad, the police have said, that if it weren't for Apple picking, crime would have been down last year, when there were almost 16,000 thefts, accounting for 14 percent of all crimes.

But even jaded police officers who have seen more than their fair share of iPhone and iPad thefts were shaking their heads over one stunning robbery that unfolded recently in Brooklyn.

This particular Apple was not just picked, it was picked twice, a white blur as it flew from hand to hand to hand on the same afternoon. And one of those hands seemingly belonged to that timeless character from countless police stories: the dumb criminal.

It was Nov. 23, a little before 4 p.m., and a 16-year-old girl was walking through Prospect Park near her home, holding her iPhone. It was an iPhone 4S — not even one of the newest ones. Her parents had warned her about the phone's distracting her in public. The ears through which those words had traveled, in one and out the other, were stuffed with white ear buds blasting the hip-hop song "Definition."

As she neared a pond, three boys about her age approached. One wore pink sneakers. A boy grabbed the iPhone, and the girl pulled it back, and the boy pulled harder. The brief tug of war ended with the boy winning. "I just kind of gave them a dirty look and they left," the girl said this week, asking that her name be withheld from this article.

iPhones are popular to steal because they can be easily reprogrammed and then sold on the black market. The victim of this particular iPhone crime turned and went back through the park the way she had come. She saw two police officers standing nearby and told them what had happened. The officers drove her around the park for a while, looking down paths and roads, but there was no sign of the boys.

They had split up. The one carrying the stolen phone took it to Flatbush. He showed it to a man on Bedford Avenue who seemed interested in buying it. But instead, the man simply snatched the phone from the boy and ran away.

The story would pretty much end right here, an uncorroborated, urban fable of caution and comeuppance, were it not for what the aggrieved boy decided to do next.

He flagged down a police car.

"He portrays himself as being a complainant," said Sgt. Arnoldo Martinez, who was working that day. "A victim."

The man suspected of taking the phone from the boy had not gotten far, and the officers arrested him in short order. They took him, and the boy, to the 70th Precinct station house.

Several blocks away, the girl was still driving with officers from the neighboring 78th Precinct, which covers Prospect Park. There was no sign of the boys, and after about an hour, one of the officers, Denisse Pacheco, suggested calling the girl's stolen phone. The girl gave her the number, and Officer Pacheco dialed.

In the 70th Precinct station house, the phone rang. One officer who had arrested the man in Flatbush answered and said, "Hello?"

Officer Pacheco assumed she was speaking to the thief, and she pretended to be the victim, looking to make a deal. "I was like: 'Hey, you have my phone. Can I have it?' " she recalled this week. " 'Can we meet up?' "

Confused, the other officer identified himself.

"You're a cop?" Officer Pacheco asked, suspicious. "From where?"

"The seven-oh," the officer replied, reciting each digit of his precinct in the manner in which officers are trained.

"Oh," Officer Pacheco said, satisfied. "I'm from the seven-eight."

The officer from the 70th Precinct said, "I have a complainant."

So do I, Officer Pacheco said.

They came up with a plan.

The officers with the boy, who still believed he was being treated as a victim, asked him to step outside the station house. Officers chatted with him to keep him occupied. Officer Pacheco and the girl drove over and parked across the street.

The girl took one look at the boy's pink sneakers and said he was one of the boys who stole her phone. Her claims were further bolstered when she was able to unlock the phone with her PIN. The boy, asked to do the same, failed, and a second set of handcuffs was called into service that afternoon. The boy's name was not released because he is a juvenile. The older suspect was identified as Jean Louis Colsun.

Officers returned the iPhone to the girl, and its disproportionate contribution to a spike in crime came to an end. The girl said that as of Thursday morning, two months later, the phone had not been stolen again.