A recent series of crackdown operations by local police in Harbin, capital of Heilongjiang Province, led to the arrests of gangs of pickpockets from Xinjiang, an autonomous region in western China.

"Pickpocketing by minors from the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region is becoming one of the most persistent threats to public safety in the city," Lu Hongxi, deputy director of the Harbin Public Security Bureau, told reporters at a press conference on Friday.

"It seems that these pickpockets are running wild recently.

"Although we've raided them several times, we still cannot say we have them under effective control," he added.

Altogether 32 pickpockets from Xinjiang were caught red-handed over the past month, according to Wang Ping, who is in charge of the anti-pickpocketing campaigns at the bureau.

Wang said pickpockets from Xingjiang have a distinct feature a group usually consists of one or two adults and several minors.

"The adults do not pick pockets themselves but let the minors do it while they keep watch," said Wang.

"We can usually catch the minors in the act, but we have to free them later as they are too young to be punished by law.

"So it is the adults that we have to catch; the children are just their tools," he said.

Wang said nine such adult "leaders" had been detained so far while 17 children were saved and returned to their hometown in Xinjiang.

(China Daily September 12, 2005)