From Barnet Boroughwatch:

Dear resident,

Two new scams have been brought to our attention this week.

Firstly a young woman has been knocking on doors in and around Garden Suburb asking to borrow £20 as her car has been clamped and she need the cash to top the £50 she already had to to pay the charge.  She says that as her children were in the vehicle she needed to act quickly. She promised to leave her wedding ring as security.  When pressed she became very evasive and left the area quickly.

 
Number two is a letter purporting to from a firm of solicitors in London informing the recipient that they are the subject of a large bequest.  As this is written in the most basic and eccentric English it is an obvious scam.

Since April there have been 31 thefts of BMW 3 series front bumpers and light clusters. BMW tell us that it would take a trained mechanic 20 minutes to remove one!  These have all occured overnight. Our advice is to park the car against a garage door or very close to another vehicle. As these items only fetch around £30 on Ebay the motive is unclear.

On a  more Worrying note, this scary scam has also been sited in the uk, where the scammer with pose as someone trying to injure you to extort money from you....  

please see the full content of the fbi notice below and report any threats to the local Police. 

 http://www.fbi.gov/page2/jan07/threat_scam011507.htm

Total crime continues to fall. The latest figures from the Met show a drop of 6.8% and almost 57,000 fewer crimes than at the same point last year. Residential burglary is down 6.6% - a drop of over 3,560 offences and overall burglary is at its lowest level since 1975. The clear up rate for crimes such as burglary, violent crime, domestic violence and crimes motivated by racism or homophobia has notably increased.

In Barnet, Residential Burglary has fallen by 294 offences from 2497 burglaries committed between 1^st April 2005 and the 18^th February 2006 to 2203 between the same period.

This is an 11.8% reduction.

Barnet Police recognise the work that is undertaken by all our partners at the Borough Council, Neighbourhood Watch and Barnet Homes is assisting the Police to make the Borough a safer place.

Barnet Police have already arrested 88 Burglar’s since the beginning of this year and with continued investigative policing and offender targeting Police want to send a message to those that if you commit Burglary in Barnet you are going to be arrested and bought before the judicial system.