cash spot-checks would be carried out on a “very regular” basis at the airport to snare criminals.

POLICE today carried out a search operation at Edinburgh Airport with sniffer dogs deployed to track down criminals smuggling cash abroad.

The operation by the UK Border Agency (UKBA) saw specially trained dogs check passengers in the airport’s departure area as they prepared to take flights from 6am today.

The crackdown was mounted in a bid to detect money being taken out of Scotland to avoid tax, or to be hidden in foreign bank accounts.

Around 1800 passengers departing on international flights between 4am and 8am today were checked for cash.

A Lithuanian man flying out to Kaunis was stopped after a dog detected money in his jacket. The man was found to be carrying £2000 and interviewed by officials, but was released after officials determined he was taking the money back to his homeland after working in the UK.

Passengers departing on flights to Amsterdam, Paris, Brussels, Tenerife, Krakow, Prague, Alicante, Budapest, New York and Copenhagen were searched as part of the operation.

Security personnel, assisted by officers from Lothian and Borders Police, separated passengers leaving on domestic and international flights into sections, with the dogs – a yellow labrador called Marley and a springer spaniel called Roddy – checking the bags and clothing of anyone going abroad.

UKBA officers also checked domestic passengers using a profiling system to identify potential smugglers to be checked by the animals and their handlers for money.

A number of passengers were also stopped with small amounts of cash notes before being allowed to proceed. Colin Fraser, senior officer at UKBA, pledged that the cash spot-checks would be carried out on a “very regular” basis at the airport to snare criminals.

He added that locations such as Dubai and mainland Spain were popular with criminals taking money abroad.

As well as depositing cash in foreign accounts, criminals also take money abroad to buy drugs or cigarettes to be smuggled back into Britain.

He said: “Our operations help ensure that money made from criminality is stopped from being hidden in bank accounts or other assets overseas, and prevent the theft of money from the public purse through unpaid tax.

“We are working with partners including the police and using specialist teams and detection techniques to stop people from using Scotland to move criminal money around, as well as to secure the border against drugs, tobacco, firearms and animal products. Our aim is to make sure genuine travellers are not inconvenienced, but anyone thinking of trying to move criminal cash around should think again.”

UKBA officers have powers to check for ill-gotten cash under the Proceeds of Crime Act, and can search anyone where there are “reasonable grounds” to suspect they are carrying more than £1000 intended for “use in unlawful conduct”.

The cash can be detained for an initial period of 48 hours without judicial authority. Sheriffs can grant confiscation orders totalling up to two years while the holder has an opportunity to prove to the court that the cash was lawfully obtained.

In 2010-11, UKBA dogs detected almost £10 million, mostly in UK pounds, US dollars and euros, as well as more than 2000kg of class A and B drugs, and more than 16m cigarettes at British airports.

massive fire raged through an overcrowded prison in Honduras, killing more than 350 inmates, many of them trapped and screaming inside their cells.

A massive fire raged through an overcrowded prison in Honduras, killing more than 350 inmates, many of them trapped and screaming inside their cells.

It was one of the world's worst prison fires and was apparently started by one of the inmates late on Tuesday night at the jail in Comayagua, about 75 km (45 miles) north of the capital Tegucigalpa.

By the end of it, 359 people were dead, said Danelia Ferrera, a senior official at the attorney general's office.

"It's a terrible scene ... Our staff went into the cells and the bodies are charred, most of them are unrecognizable," Ferrera told Reuters, adding officials would have to use dental records and DNA in many cases to identify those killed.

A convict was suspected of starting the blaze, said the governor of Comayagua province, Paola Castro.

"One inmate got in touch with me just after 11 p.m. to say another inmate had set fire to the prison in block number 6, presumably by setting fire to a mattress," she said, noting she had met the prisoner during her social work at the prison.

Jails are stuffed full of convicts in Honduras, which is ravaged by violent street gangs, brutal drug traffickers and rampant poverty. According to the United Nations, the country has the highest murder rate in the world.

Violence on the streets is mirrored by frequent riots and deadly clashes between rival gangs behind bars.

But the carnage in the Comayagua prison was shocking even by Honduran standards. Chaos erupted after the blaze took hold.

"We heard screaming from the people who caught on fire," one prisoner told reporters, showing fingers he fractured escaping the blaze. "We had to push up the roof panels to get out."

Injured inmates were filmed being carried out of the jail, some crawling with visible burns.

By the time Red Cross volunteer Jose Manuel Gomez arrived, all he could do for many was gather up their remains.

"We're placing them into bags in parts because when we grab them, they disintegrate," he said.

The inferno was the third major prison fire in Honduras since 2003 with dilapidated jails packed at more than double their capacity across the Central American nation.

Worried and angry relatives surrounded the prison on Wednesday morning, at one point throwing rocks at police and trying to force their way inside the prison.

Police responded by firing shots into the air and shooting tear gas at protesters, most of whom were women.

President Porfirio Lobo said he had suspended the director of the Comayagua prison and the head of the national prison system to ensure a thorough investigation.

He promised to "take urgent measures to deal with this tragedy, which has plunged all Hondurans into mourning."

Police reported that one of the dead was a woman who had stayed overnight at the prison and the rest were inmates, but noted some of those presumed dead could have escaped.

VIOLENT GANGS, DRUGS

Honduras' violent street gangs, known as 'maras', gained power inside Hispanic neighborhoods in the United States in the 1980s and then spread down into Central America. Their members wear distinctive tattoos and are involved in drugs and weapons trafficking, armed robbery and protection rackets.

A local police chief read out the names of 457 survivors outside the prison on Wednesday, but relatives still clamored for more information.

"This is desperate, they won't tell us anything and I think my husband is dead," a crying Gregoria Zelaya told Canal 5 TV as she stood by a chain link fence.

Officials are still investigating the cause. They said earlier on Wednesday that a short circuit might have been behind the blaze at the Comayagua prison, which housed more than 850 inmates, well above its limit of around 500.

The country's penitentiaries are meant to hold 6,000 but the prison population is more than 12,500.

In 2003, a fire broke out after a riot in another prison in northern Honduras, killing 68 people. A scandal ensued when an investigation found that police and prison staff had shot and stabbed inmates in the melee.

The government pledged to improve the crumbling prison system but just a year later more than 100 prisoners were killed in a fire in San Pedro Sula. Survivors of that blaze said guards fired on inmates trying to escape or left them locked up to die.

Honduras had more than 80 homicides per 100,000 people in 2009, a rate 16 times that of the United States, according to a United Nations report last year. A slow and inefficient justice system has stretched jails to bursting point.

The country is a major narcotics trafficking transit point for South American cocaine moving north to consumers in the United States, and authorities say they are grappling with a growing presence of violent Mexican drug cartels.

A political crisis ripped through Honduras in mid-2009 when a widely-condemned coup toppled the democratically elected president but the country has been trying to heal divisions since Lobo was elected later that year.

The Doyle brothers spent time together in Spain, where Barry was inducted into the company of the Dublin and Limerick thugs living it large on the Costa.

PEOPLE WHO knew Barry Doyle say he had it all. He was a good- looking young man who excelled at sport, a good student who was skilled with his hands when he chose to put them to good use.

He was from Portland Row on the deprived mean streets of Dublin’s north inner city, and was educated just a few hundred yards from his home, at O’Connell’s CBS on North Richmond Street.

As a student he played Gaelic football and was regarded as a hugely talented player. He went on to serve time as a bricklayer, but never qualified, having lost his way as his teenage years gave way to his 20s.

“In many ways he was a golden child,” said someone who knew him.

“He genuinely did have it all. When people who he knew then heard his name on the television the first time he was in court for the killing in Limerick, they were stunned.

“It stopped you in your tracks; to think that all he had going for him and yet that’s what he ended up doing. But it was the brother that dragged him down into the gutter, everyone knows that.”

The brother of whom the source speaks was Paddy Doyle; a gun for hire whose notorious career was brought to an end in a hail of bullets in Spain four years ago.

In November 2005, when a rapid round of blood-letting in Dublin brought a gang feud in Crumlin-Drimnagh to public prominence, Paddy Doyle was front and centre of that violence.

On November 13th, two men – Darren Geoghegan (26) and Gavin Byrne (30) – were shot dead in a car in Firhouse, south Dublin, as part of the feud. Doyle is believed to have been paid by one of the Crumlin-Drimnagh gangs to carry out those murders.

Less than 48 hours later, when Noel Roche (27) was shot dead as he sat in traffic on the seafront in Clontarf, north Dublin, Doyle was again the chief suspect. That killing was also part of the Crumlin-Drimnagh feud.

Three years earlier, when Joseph Rattigan (18) was shot dead in Drimnagh in the second murder in the feud, the Garda’s intelligence coming from criminal contacts fingered Paddy Doyle.

By the time he was himself shot dead in February 2008, while driving from a gym near Marbella in a 4x4 BMW, he had already introduced his kid brother Barry into his world.

Paddy Doyle had significant contacts, not only among gangs in Dublin, but also in Limerick, having met some of the McCarthy- Dundon gang in prison.

The Doyle brothers spent time together in Spain, where Barry was inducted into the company of the Dublin and Limerick thugs living it large on the Costa.

There was evidence at his trial that he first met members of the McCarthy-Dundon gang at his brother’s home near Malaga. When Paddy was shot dead, Barry Doyle continued the relationship with his brothers’ Limerick associates.

Despite having only minor convictions, for driving offences and drink-related public-order issues, by the second half of 2008 and into 2009, he had moved to Limerick and was dealing drugs.

He was effectively living in the bosom of the McCarthy-Dundons.

So integrated was he into the gangland family that gardaí believe he went out to kill for them on the night Shane Geoghegan was shot; not for money like his brother had done, but because he was a fully fledged member of the gang.

He was expected to play his part when it moved against its enemies.

But instead of killing the gang’s target – a Limerick man called John McNamara – Doyle mistook Geoghegan for McNamara and shot the rugby player.

The murder led to an outpouring of public revulsion, with then minister for justice Dermot Ahern describing it as “an absolutely awful killing committed by scum”.

Following the murder in Limerick of Roy Collins just months earlier, new anti-gangland laws had been drawn up, but they had stalled by the time Geoghegan was shot. Just two days after Geoghegan’s murder, Ahern and then taoiseach Brian Cowen met the then Garda commissioner Fachtna Murphy for a crisis summit. It was decided the laws would be fast-tracked and they were enacted seven months later.

They allowed for more gangland trials to be held in the non-jury Special Criminal Court, they created a specific offence of participating in a gang and enabled gardaí to use phone taps as evidence in court.

While regarded as a radical departure at the time, the laws have proved ineffective, with the DPP proving unwilling to take such cases to the courts.

The murder led to a show of resilience among the people of Limerick. Thousands turned out for Geoghegan’s funeral and they clapped the hearse carrying his body through the streets. Hundreds of thousands signed petitions for an end to violence in the city.

A sporting foundation for at-risk children was established in his honour and his number 3 jersey from the Garryowen Thirds was retired for good.

Last November, three years after his death, “A pitch for Shane”, comprising more than 1,000 ceramic pieces made in his memory, and sent to Limerick from all over the world, was put on display in Limerick.

Yesterday, Garryowen FC president Eoghan Prendergast said clubs as far away as New Zealand had sent messages of support and that the people of Limerick had been galvanised by Geoghegan’s murder.

“Limerick is represented by Shane Geoghegan, not the people who killed him,” he said. “The killing galvanised the community into saying ‘this cannot go on any longer’.”

drug gang threatened to kill an officer per day

 

2,000 police are hunkering down in hotels in Mexico's most violent city of Ciudad Juarez after a drug gang threatened to kill an officer per day if their chief refused to resign. Eleven police officers, including four commanders, have already been killed in the city across from El Paso, Texas, since the start of the year. The city's mayor this week ordered police to use several local hotels as temporary barracks to protect themselves from attacks on the way home from work in the city at the heart of Mexican drug violence that has left 50,000 dead in five years. Mayor Hector Murguia said Tuesday that they would stay in hotels for at least three months, with 1.5 million dollars put aside to pay for it. Murguia stood by his police chief, Julian Leyzaola, a controversial former soldier who has also been asked to resign by human rights groups for his alleged heavy-handed policing. "The chances that he (Leyzaola) resigns or that they force him to resign are zero percent," the mayor told journalists. At the entrance to the Rio motel, on Las Torres avenue, several patrols stand guard to protect access to the improvised barracks, as others monitor vehicles passing by. Last week, several banners signed by the "New Cartel of Juarez" appeared around the city of 1.3 million, to announce the killing of a police officer each day as long as Leyzaola stayed in charge of the local police. Some of the messages also accused the police chief of protecting another group, "New Generation," allied to powerful Sinaloa drug cartel of fugitive billionaire Joaquin "El Chapo" Guzman. According to the mayor, the threats only showed how concerned the drug gangs were in the face of Leyzaola. Murders fell to less than 2,000 in the city in 2011 -- the year Leyzaola took control -- from 3,100 in 2010. Key leaders of city gangs like the "Aztecas" were also captured. Leyzaola already provoked controversy when he led police in another Mexican border city, Tijuana in northwest Mexico. Authorities lauded him for reducing crime there but organizations such as Amnesty International sought to put him on trial for the alleged torture of prisoners, backed by witness accounts from at least 25 police. Since Leyzaola took over the local police in Ciudad Juarez in March 2011, the Chihuahua state human rights commission has recorded 37 complaints against him, including for abuse of authority and arbitrary detentions. Gustavo de la Rosa, a commission member, told AFP that the police "were told to arrest anyone who looked like a criminal or became nervous on seeing someone in uniform." The business community of Ciudad Juarez -- the base of almost 20 percent of Mexico's manufacturing industry -- support the police chief, however. "It's clear that we have to stop the violence continuing, particularly murders of police. We have to look for means to reinforce the local police," said Alejandro Seade, director of the city's chamber of commerce.

NYC authorities hunt for leader of Folk Nation gang blamed for bloodshed

 

It’s one of the more colorful street gang names around: Six Tre Outlaw Gangsta Disciples Folk Nation — or Folk Nation, for short. Federal prosecutors in Brooklyn allege that a particularly violent faction of the gang was behind at least four murders, three attempted murders and other mayhem that harmed innocent bystanders and terrorized the Ebbets Field Apartments housing complex, located where the storied ballpark once stood. 0 Comments Weigh InCorrections? inShare ( FBI / Associated Press ) - In this undated photo provided by the Federal Bureau of Investigation, Devon Rodney is shown. Wanted by the FBI, Rodney is the leader of the Brooklyn, N.Y. based Folk Nation gang, which they say is responsible for a series for armed robberies and shootings. A day after announcing charges against the faction’s upper echelon, the FBI and the New York Police Department sought the public’s help in a search Wednesday for a top lieutenant and another member still on the run. The fugitives were identified as 24 year-old Devon Rodney and 19-year-old Rahleek Odom. An undisclosed reward was offered for tips leading to their capture. The Folk Nation “claimed its turf by force ... leaving a trail of victims in its wake,” said U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch. Said Janice Fedarcyk, head of the FBI’s New York office: “The defendants’ ruthlessness was matched by their recklessness.”

Amy Winehouse coroner 'not qualified'

 

The family of singer Amy Winehouse have said they are "taking advice" following news that the coroner who oversaw her inquest has resigned. Camden Council has confirmed that Suzanne Greenaway had stood down because she had not been a lawyer in the UK for the required five years. The council said she had been appointed "in error" by her husband Andrew Reid, the coroner for inner north London. Ms Greenaway ruled that Winehouse, 27, died from accidental alcohol poisoning. She returned a verdict of misadventure. The Office for Judicial Complaints has begun an inquiry into Dr Reid's conduct. Letter of apology In a statement, Winehouse's relatives said: "The Winehouse family is taking advice on the implications of this and will decide if any further discussion with the authorities is needed." Ms Greenaway qualified in Australia in 1999 in September and was a member of the Supreme Court there but she had not worked as a lawyer for the required time in the UK, a Camden Council spokesman said. The spokesman added that the Winehouse inquest verdict remained legal and would only be judged illegal if it was challenged and subsequently overturned by the High Court. Amy Winehouse's father leaves St Pancras Coroners Court Dr Reid said he was writing to all of the families affected to apologise. He said: "While I am confident that all of the inquests handled were done so correctly, I apologise if this matter causes distress to the families and friends of the deceased." He has offered to hold the inquests over again if the families of the deceased request it. During her time as deputy assistant coroner, Ms Greenaway conducted 12 inquests in Camden, but mainly worked from Poplar Coroner's Court. Coroners are appointed by the Ministry of Justice who then interview and appoint their own staff, including in the case of Dr Reid, his assistant deputy coroner. Under the Coroners Act, he must then notify the local authority although it has no power of scrutiny over appointments, a Camden Council spokesman said. The inquest into Winehouse's death heard she was more than five times the drink-drive limit when she died on 23 July. Ms Greenway had said the "unintended consequence" of Winehouse drinking so much alcohol was her "sudden and unexpected death". Three empty vodka bottles, two large and one small, were found at her flat, St Pancras Coroner's Court heard.

The great Asian gold theft crisis

 

Two small faces pull the curtain back in a side room and peer round to see who is at the door. After they run back inside, their mother, Mrs Rashid, unlocks the front door. Five weeks ago, she came home one evening to find the door ajar. The downstairs floor of her house was relatively untouched but upstairs the bedrooms had been ransacked – drawers opened, wardrobes emptied, clothes and belongings scattered everywhere. "It was such a huge shock," she says, sitting on the sofa, her voice breaking slightly. Her husband, Mr Rashid (neither want to give their full names), a big man sitting across the room, shakes his head. "They took it all," he says. The thieves who broke into this semi-detached house in Earley, near Reading, stole around £70,000-worth of gold jewellery. To those who are not from a south Asian family, it might seem remarkable to own so much valuable jewellery, but families such as the Rashids (Mr Rashid runs a small business) live in ordinary houses and are not particularly wealthy. Their gold collection – elaborate necklaces, rings, earrings and bangles – is treasure that has been handed down from generations of their families in Pakistan or bought as wedding gifts. It's our savings, our security, says Mrs Rashid, visibly upset. If, in future, the family needed money, they would have sold some pieces. "It's like paying a mortgage for 20 years and then having a house worth thousands of pounds afterwards – it's the same thing with gold," she says. "Our parents gave it to us, we would have given it to our children, they would have given it to their children," says her husband. They tried to put their gold in the bank, but "there were no lockers available. Everyone is looking for one." With other investments looking distinctly shaky in the economic crisis, last year gold prices reached record levels. In the autumn, an ounce reached a peak price of £1,194; today it is worth around £1,100 and analysts predict it could reach a new peak later this year or early next, as people seek safer investments, and demand for gold jewellery rises with the growing middle-classes in India. Asian gold (sometimes called Indian gold) is a broad term that covers jewellery bought and held by south Asian families, and often passed down through the generations. It tends to be the highest quality – often 24 carats, the purest gold – and it has vastly increased in value, sometimes to the point where a family can't afford to insure it. Thieves know that some south Asian families may have a large collection of gold at home, and it is these houses they target. There are no figures for the number of gold thefts, let alone the theft of Asian gold, but everyone I speak to believes the number of robberies is increasing. Last year, several police forces in areas where there is a large Asian community, such as Leicester and Slough, ran awareness campaigns after a spate of opportunistic robberies – there have been several reports of women who have had their gold jewellery snatched in the street – and burglaries. For a while, an attempted gold theft was a line of inquiry in the murders of Carole and Avtar Kolar in Birmingham in January, though the police later ruled this out. Mr Rashid shows me the window in the downstairs bathroom that was broken, and where the thieves must have got in. He thinks the house was being watched, because he noticed a silver car outside the front some days before. "My family is so frightened," he says. "My kids won't go upstairs on their own, it's a completely different life since it happened." They feel the police have not been very supportive, and they have little hope the perpetrators will be caught. "I was already upset, and a policeman said: 'Your gold must have been melted down by now,'" says Mrs Rashid. "I was even more upset when he said that." The Rashids know of several other families in the area who have been burgled. "A few watches and a BlackBerry were taken, but they were looking for gold," says Vikas Tandon, whose house in the area was broken into in September. "They seemed to know where to look – I am confident they used metal detectors. There were bowls of jewellery in one of the rooms, with real gold and artificial jewellery mixed in together. They only took the gold, so they knew what they were looking for." Tandon has now installed CCTV cameras "to give the family more confidence. The loss of the gold itself is bad, but the psychological after-effects of being burgled are worse. Everyone is scared." A local councillor, Tahir Maher, says: "A lot of residents have been very badly affected. It started in the summer. It is very much Asian families who are being targeted." In one day, he says, five homes in the area were burgled and gold stolen. He went door-to-door warning families to keep their gold in safes, or put it in the bank, "although banks have started to stop giving people safe deposit boxes, so people are keeping their gold at home". It isn't just homes that are targeted. This month, in Bradford, two men wearing balaclavas stole bagfuls of gold worth up to £100,000 – a third man had driven a 4x4 into the back of a jewellers as it was closing up. The terrified staff fled. In areas of Birmingham where there are a large number of Asian jewellers, several shops have been robbed. In the Handsworth area, where many south Asian people come to buy jewellery, there are numerous jewellers. Wedding sets – an elaborate necklace and earrings in 22-carat gold – can cost upwards of £5,000 for a fairly basic design, though the sets I see on display in many of the shops are much cheaper, lesser quality versions. Most of the jewellers have CCTV cameras and metal shutters. One of the jewellers I go into is protected by cameras, a metal grille, bulletproof glass and two time-lock doors. Another jewellers across the road was robbed last year during the day by three armed men. "There were customers in the shop," says the owner, who does not want to be named and is reluctant to go into details. He says there is an increased level of fear among jewellers specialising in Asian gold. "There is a fear daily. This is what we are living with now." Nigel Blackburn is chairman of Lois Jewellery, one of the biggest gold buyers in Birmingham's Jewellery Quarter. The staff behind the counters are busy dealing with a steady stream of customers bringing everything from random old bits of broken chains and odd earrings, to cases full of gold jewellery. It is weighed, the quality gauged, and cash is handed over. I watch some people leave with bundles of notes – one man, who has brought in several kilos of gold, walks out on to the street with nearly £75,000 in £50 notes stuffed into a plastic carrier bag. Blackburn's company buys £4-5m worth of gold every week, and about £500,000 of that is Asian gold. Much of it comes from jewellers wanting to get rid of stock, from owners selling pieces and from smaller dealers selling it on. He shows me a tub of bangles ready for smelting (once molten, they are poured into a mould and come out as gold bars). The prices have rocketed. Six years ago a kilo of Asian gold jewellery would have fetched £6,000; now it is worth £30,000. How much of it is stolen? Hopefully none of it, he says. His staff do what they can – sellers fill out a form before their gold can be bought – but he says: "ID means nothing these days – criminals can forge anything." Mainly his staff rely on judgment. "If someone brings in a gold chain that has been snapped, it could have been pulled off someone's neck," he says. "If someone is out there" – he points to the timelock door where people can be seen before they are admitted – "and they look nervous or they just don't look 'right', that will raise alarm bells. We will not buy from anybody we're not sure of. There are unscrupulous [dealers] round here. They buy it, they melt it and then you can't prove anything." Many of the dealers have smelting equipment, and it can be done in a matter of minutes. Inevitably, sometimes stolen gold "slips through the net. But we've got the CCTV to give the police. We have cameras trained on the scales, so we film everything we buy, and the people who sell it." He works closely with the police and they are called any time he is suspicious of somebody; he was responsible for 14 arrests one week. If there's a robbery, especially in the Midlands, he will be alerted, "so we know what to look out for". Another jeweller in the area who buys gold says she knows of dealers who don't care if they buy stolen gold. She thinks she has been offered stolen Asian gold in the past, "but I refused to buy it. I don't want to make my money in a dishonest way." But there are numerous ways to easily sell gold with few questions asked. "There are places in shopping centres that will buy gold and pay good prices. Even Tesco now buys it," says one jeweller. There is also a wealth of online scrap gold dealers who will pay upwards of £800 an ounce for the finest quality (usually Asian) gold – simply send the jewellery off in an envelope and wait for money to be sent back. "One of the issues is that gold jewellery is often not traceable," says Paul Uppal, MP for Wolverhampton South West, who has taken an interest in the issue of gold theft. "Constituents had spoken about it, and also coming from an Asian family it was word-of-mouth as well. At the moment, it's easy to smelt the gold down and sell it off." Gold sales aren't covered under the Scrap Metal Dealers Act, which requires dealers to keep detailed records of metal received; many think the act is inadequate. It could be updated later this year if a current six-month pilot scheme is a success, but it isn't clear if precious metals will be included. "Anyone can walk into a jewellers and the gold can be smelted down within 20 minutes," says Uppal. "There needs to be some sort of audit trail. I've mentioned it to ministers whenever I can but the problem is, it seems to be viewed in the grand scheme of metal theft. This is quite nuanced, and very specific to the Asian community as well." In Earley, councillor Maher has helped set up a neighbourhood watch-style group aimed at the Asian community worried about gold burglaries. It is still a new scheme, but he says it is growing. "People are looking out for each other," he says. He is working with the police closely because he says his big fear is that "people may take matters into their own hands in a bad way". The way he talks makes it sound like a community under attack – Maher knows of families who have lost tens of thousands of pounds' worth of gold, including elderly people, a single mother and another woman who miscarried after discovering her house had been broken into. "People are living in fear. Mothers were scared to be at home with their children in the day, and older people were frightened of being attacked in the street or followed home," he says. "There is a lot of mistrust. This has cost the community a lot."