Cops watch for sand thieves

Police in Liuzhen town in Beijing's Changping district have been assigned to patrol farmlands for sand thieves who have destroyed massive patches of cropland and threatened villagers' lives, the local government said.

Farmers said the thieves have been digging up their fields under the cover of darkness and selling the sand to nine mines for industrial use, the Beijing Times reported yesterday.

Dozens of acres of cornfields in Heizhai village were turned into yawning holes, the report quoted village head Huang Chenghua as saying.