We are all shocked to learn that Mr Gerald, a soft-spoken decent person in the entire neighbourhood, was a fence, buying and selling stolen goods for quite some time!

Most fences, according to the police, are either ex-criminals who have given up committing major crimes or pawn brokers or antique shop owners who accept stolen goods and sell them, making a ‘modest’ profit.

The ridiculous thing about our policing is that though everybody knows about fences in a particular area and even a kid knows where to get a particular fence for a particular item and thousands of stolen goods change hands every week, our law officers living close to such fences maintain ignorance of such activities and ask the public to report such illegal activities to them at the risk of being harmed!