ALIEN CRIMINALS

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 654, 4 May 1929, Page 27

ALIEN CRIMINALS

SCOTLAND YARD’S WAR ON UNDESIRABLES

VIGOROUS ROUND UP No aspect of the strenuous police campaign against London’s underworld gangs has been more marked than its effectiveness in purifying the country by turning out undesirable aliens (says the “Sunday News’*). Many of them have fled voluntarily, iest their misdeeds should be brought home to them while they were still within the reach of the law. Others, who perhaps thought *heir activities Proof against disclosure, have stayed, but they are steadily being discovered and deported. At the present moment at least half a dozen of the most notorious among them are under sentence of deportation. Among these is a native of China whose malevolent business has for some time attracted the serious attention of the authorities. He has establishments alike in the west and east °k London, anc * was associated with that arch-scoundrel known as Brilliant Chang, who was sent home a long while ago. He and his subordinates have been several times before the magistrates in connection with the illicit sale of noxious drugs. Some of the lesser members of the gang have been In saol, but the chief of them always managed to escape the extreme penof his misdeeds. He married an English girl, whom he met at a picture show in Liverpool, brought her to London, and settled her in Limehouse, where she became the mother of two children. He appears to have treated her with some consideration, but when he insisted that she should sell cocaine, she indignantly refused, and eventually she left him. All his efforts to trace net were vain, but it is believed that, with her children, she has gone back to her native city. When he was told that he would be given some weeks in which to clear UP his affairs here, he protested that [t would take much longer, and added: I do not want to leave England; it m my home, and I have never done anything that is wrong—never.’’ This ln spite of his convictions, and the array of evidence of his breaches of jhe law, which were explained to him by the detectives who conveyed the information of his expulsion. Cerminly England will be purer for his departure. Two others who are to be deported ** UBsia ns, and they have pleaded |bat their own country will not receive idem. Another is an Italian, and yet another a Belgian. None is poverty-

stricken, and the authorities know that they have made considerable fortunes in their unlawful transactions, though it may be that much of their ill-gotten gains has been dissipated. A somewhat difficult aspect of the campaign is the undoubted fact that many aliens have "sneaked” back under other names and with forged passports, but Lord Byng has succeeded in making such tricks almost impossible. Fingerprints of deportees are now retained at Scotland Yard, so that disguises will count for nothing. Where an alien is suspected, he or she will at once be asked for fingerprints, and "held” until they have been compared with a special list compiled among the records at the Yard. The vigilance of the police under their energetic new chief is also shown by a comb-out of the boarding and lodging houses where aliens are wont to reside. Registers have been closely inspected, and the writing of signatures studied. Kitchens of common lodging houses have been entered by plain-clothes men, who have not been' suspected of association with the police, while “smart” West End restaurants and saloons have had as customers keen-eyed detectives on the look-out for alien lawbreakers. “U A M G ” —undesirable aliens must go—is the slogan of the new regime, and it is being carried into effect with admirable thoroughness.