More than 10,000 illegal vapes and tobacco products seized in Glasgow
A haul of illegal vapes and cigarettes has been seized by police in Glasgow.
Community officers in the Govan area seized more than 10,000 illegal products in a joint operation with Glasgow City Council, Trading Standards and Consumer Protection Dogs UK.
The recovery took place today, April 30, according to Police Scotland Greater Glasgow, who announced the news on X.
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Today, as part of Operation CECE, local Community Officers carried out a joint inspection with @GlasgowCC , @socotss and @ConsumerDogs in a convenience store in the Govan area. A number of illicit tobacco, cigarettes and vapes in excess of 10,000 were seized. pic.twitter.com/6tYvz8RJAt
— Police Scotland Greater Glasgow (@PSOSGreaterGlas) April 30, 2025
They wrote: "Today, as part of Operation CECE, local Community Officers carried out a joint inspection with Glasgow City Council, Trading Standards and Consumer Protection Dogs UK, in a convenience store in the Govan area.
"A number of illicit tobacco, cigarettes and vapes in excess of 10,000 were seized."
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New York Times
14 hours ago
- New York Times
Ex-Arsenal talent jailed for drug smuggling, who can beat Spain at World Cup?
The Athletic FC ⚽ is The Athletic's daily football (or soccer, if you prefer) newsletter. Sign up to receive it directly to your inbox. Hello. He once had Arsene Wenger purring. Now this former Arsenal forward is serving time for drug smuggling. On the way: The reason Jay Emmanuel-Thomas is now a former footballer is because of the story you're about to read. As recently as September of last year, he was playing out his days with Greenock Morton, a Scottish team on the outskirts of Glasgow. Then the police came knocking. That same month, Emmanuel-Thomas — best known as a product of Arsenal's academy — was arrested as part of a drugs bust and accused of smuggling cannabis with a street value of £600,000 ($814,000) into the UK. Yesterday, a court sentenced him to four years in prison. Aged 34, his name is tarred and his career is over, a sharp fall from grace complete. Advertisement It's many moons since mentions of Emmanuel-Thomas in dispatches were making ears prick at Arsenal and beyond. Ultimately, it didn't happen for him there and he soon became nomadic, passing through clubs in England, Scotland, Thailand and India. But he's still the guy Arsene Wenger once described as 'an unbelievable finisher' — so lethal and powerful that when he helped destroy Liverpool in the FA Youth Cup in 2009, Liverpool's players refused to believe he was young enough to be taking part in the competition. Why, then, did Emmanuel-Thomas embroil himself in the importation of narcotics, a crime his own barrister described as 'a catastrophic error of judgement', when, before this offence, he had been a law-abiding citizen his entire life? Danny Taylor was in court to find out. 'The most painful experience' By the time of his arrest, Emmanuel-Thomas was no longer earning big from football. His pay at Morton was £600 a week, before bonuses. The club terminated his six-month contract as soon as he was charged. Chelmsford Crown Court heard how he may have been tempted into criminality during his short time playing for Thai side PTT Rayong in 2019. The cannabis in question arrived on a plane from Bangkok. The court was also told that Emmanuel-Thomas enlisted two women — one of them his own partner at the time — to act as couriers, promising them £2,500 in cash and flying them business class via Dubai. The women were themselves charged by police, but the allegations against them were dropped after WhatsApp conversations showed they believed they were bringing gold back to the UK, rather than illegal drugs. Emmanuel-Thomas deleted his messages, threw away his mobile phone and, at first, denied all wrongdoing — before changing his tune and pleading guilty. The maximum sentence for cannabis importation in the UK is 14 years. He received four, although nine months of that sentence have already been served by him on remand. He called his conviction 'the most painful and eye-opening experience of my life'. Advertisement A father of two, he will re-emerge from prison before long, with no semblance of a career to cling to. As the judge told him, 'You will no longer be known for being a professional footballer. You will be known as a criminal, a professional footballer who threw it all away and put others at risk of imprisonment in pursuit of money.' The World Cup is rarely a foregone conclusion but, with the big kick-off in North America a little over 12 months away, is anybody looking beyond Spain? They're the European Championship holders, they've got Lamine Yamal running riot and they're different gravy. OK, their Nations League semi-final against France last night ended 5-4 in their favour, but I was packing up and heading to bed when they led 5-1 with 12 minutes to go. It was worth hanging on to see evidence (if any more was needed) of why Manchester City are so set on seducing France's Rayan Cherki. In the chaos of a frantic finish, he hammered in a beast of a volley (above) and plucked an assist right out of the Yamal playbook. These boys are the future, just like the Spanish, who face Cristiano Ronaldo's Portugal in Sunday's final. Our pals at The Pulse run a regular section entitled 'Hi, my name is…', where they introduce us to a prospect we haven't heard of (or not in great detail). Today, I'm pinching it for a footballer who is 32. Ravel Morrison won't need introducing to many of you, but he's been so far off the radar for so long that some readers might not be familiar. How gifted was he as a teenage midfielder at Manchester United? Sir Alex Ferguson explained it best when he said he'd never seen anybody better. Morrison displayed his talent with an iconic instep volley during an England Under-21 training session, below. Danny Taylor has interviewed Morrison for The Athletic and it's a great get because Morrison doesn't do much media. 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Yahoo
2 days ago
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The Scottish ‘tartan turf war' that went global
With a three-hour 'happy hour' and four big-screen TVs, Monaghans Bar in the Spanish resort of Fuengirola is a popular spot for those who like a night of soccer after a day of sun and sand. But on Saturday night, after drinkers watched the UEFA Champions League Final, a showdown of a less sporting sort unfolded outside. Just as the bar was emptying around 11.30pm, a car pulled up outside from which a black-clad gunman emerged. He shot dead the bar's Scottish owner, Ross Monaghan, and his Glaswegian friend Eddie Lyons Junior, before fleeing into the night. The double murder was the latest in a series of recent shootings on Spain's southern coast, long considered the 'Costa Del Crime'. Yet the hit may have been ordered from the rather less balmy climes of Glasgow, where a quarter-century feud between the city's two most powerful crime families is now spiralling out of control. In scenes that resemble an over-hyped episode of Taggart, the rival Lyons and Daniel gangs have been in open warfare for the past three months. Scores of homes and businesses, including garages, cab firms and beauty parlours, have been firebombed. Suspected associates have been attacked with machetes. Masked thugs behind the mayhem post videos of their handiwork online – shattering decades of painstaking PR in which Glasgow reinvented itself as a 'City of Culture'. The so-called 'tartan turf wars' are a throwback to the rougher Red Clydeside movement of the 1960s, when razor gangs terrorised the city. Today's Glasgow hard men, though, wield much deadlier weaponry than long-handled shaving blades, and their fiefdoms are no longer confined to council estates like Easterhouse. Attacks have taken place all over central Scotland, spreading to well-heeled districts of Edinburgh too. The feud reportedly dates back to the Lyons gang stealing a drug stash from the Daniels some 25 years ago, but onlookers fear it has become a battle to master the entirety of urban Scotland's lucrative drug trade. 'These groups have grown obscenely wealthy, preying on communities of very vulnerable people,' says MSP Russell Findlay, the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, who says the government has been complacent about the rising threat of organised crime. 'These two individuals who were killed were prominent members of organised crime, and while it's still unclear who was behind their deaths, it seems they are paying the price for the lifestyle they led.' Mr Findlay is well-qualified to comment on the subject, having previously worked as an investigative crime reporter for Scottish TV and tabloid newspapers. In 2012, he wrote a book about the Daniel-Lyons feud, chronicling the misery it inflicted on Glasgow's Milton housing estate, the Lyons' original stronghold. The book's title, Caught in the Crossfire, was to prove horribly prophetic: three years later, Findlay himself was attacked on his doorstep by a knifeman who threw acid in his face. It was the kind of brazen intimidation more associated with Latin American narco-states – something that Scotland will come to resemble if more is not done, he warns. 'I remember thinking at the time: 'Why is nobody else saying enough is enough?'' he says. 'This is what happens when organised crime becomes too powerful: they try to take on mainstream society.' Spanish police have yet to identify the Fuengirola gunman, who some reports claim was a blonde-haired man presumed to be a fellow Scot. Scottish police, however, are likely to have no shortage of suspects already on their files. Both Monaghan, 43, and Lyons Junior, 46, were members of the Lyons gang, and no strangers to the art of the gangland hit themselves. Monaghan had been arrested then acquitted of the 2010 murder of Kevin 'Gerbil' Carroll, a notorious Daniel-gang enforcer. He then moved to Spain after being shot in the shoulder in Glasgow in 2017. He and Lyons Junior both also stood trial for attacking three men outside a bar in Dunbartonshire in 2016, the case only collapsing when the alleged victims claimed they had no memory of what happened. Indeed, those caught up in Lyons-Daniel violence have a marked tendency to 'forget' their testimony, much to the frustration of police. One incident that neither gang ever seems to have forgotten, though, is the theft of £20,000 worth of cocaine back in 2001 from a Daniel safe house. Nicknamed 'Morningside Speed' in honour of the posh Edinburgh suburb of the same name, cocaine was then relatively new to Scotland. Previously, heroin had been the drug of choice on impoverished housing estates – courtesy of smugglers like Jamie Daniel, the Daniel-gang founder, who flooded Glasgow with it in the early Eighties. Cocaine, though, was far more lucrative, and the theft of the stash, while relatively small in value, sparked a wider turf war over dealing patches. Escalating the violence was Carroll, who had allegedly been bullied by the Lyons' family during his schooldays, and was now a senior enforcer for the Daniel gang. He was infamous for so-called 'alien abductions', where rivals would be kidnapped, tortured and then dumped semi-naked on the street, too traumatised (or too terrified) to say what had happened to them. Not content with inflicting physical harm, he also vandalised a gravestone for Eddie Lyon Junior's younger brother, Garry, who died from leukaemia aged eight in 1991. Perceived as an outrage even by gangland standards, that act led to Carroll himself being shot dead in an Asda car park in Glasgow in 2010, in full view of horrified shoppers. So reviled was Carroll that police had nearly 100 potential suspects for his murder, and his death might have drawn a line under the feud. But it flared up again in 2016 when Jamie Daniel passed away from cancer – one of the few gang kingpins to die peacefully. His death left a power vacuum, which the Lyons' clan tried to exploit through five attempted murders in just five months. In one particularly savage case, Stephen 'Bonzo' Daniel was hunted down after a 100mph car chase through north Glasgow, before having his face macheted so badly that paramedics thought at first that he had been shot. 'His nose was hanging off on the left hand side near his ear', a policeman told a later trial of six Lyons associates, who were convicted of the five murder plots in 2019. Jailing them for a total of 104 years, a judge told them: 'You sought to turn Glasgow into a war zone for your feud. This is a civilised city, based on the rule of law.' With the violence now flaring up again, many Scots might well doubt that – not least those living in the streets where properties have been firebombed. While the gang kingpins often live in fortress-like mansions, equipped with CCTV, safe rooms and anti-ram-raid bollards, their footsoldiers often live on suburban estates. The precise spark for the latest hostilities remains unknown, although some believe it may be linked to the gangs' growing links to international drug cartels. The Lyons gang is said to have forged close links to Ireland's feared Kinahan cocaine cartel, whose senior members holed up in Dubai after pressure from the Dublin authorities. One Lyons family member has also lived in Dubai since an attempt on his life in Glasgow in 2006, and is said to have formed a 'Celtic cartel' with his Irish counterparts, whereby Lyons street dealers distribute Kinahan-supplied cocaine. Scottish police have already arrested at least 40 people over the feud, while Angela Constance, the SNP Justice Secretary, insisted that law-abiding Scots had nothing to fear. 'Scotland continues to be a safe place to live, with recorded crime down 40 per cent since 2006/07,' she said last month. Critics, however, complain the police service remains underfunded. For Findlay, the problems go even deeper. Far too much of Scotland's establishment, he says, has given the gangs the benefit of the doubt – from the Edinburgh professionals who act as their defence lawyers and accountants, to Left-leaning politicians who see them as victims of social injustice. He remembers how, in the mid-Nineties, Eddie Lyons Senior was given use of a former school in Milton for a 'community project', despite already being well-known to police. Objections, Findlay says, were overlooked by councillors who naively regarded Lyons Senior as a community activist. The centre was later shut down amid complaints it had become a gang hub. But Findlay cites multiple other examples where gangs are still flexing their muscles. In South Lanarkshire, a fellow Tory councillor, Graeme Campbell, quit his role after rows over planning issues led to gangsters attacking his house three times. And at jails across the country, prison officers' cars have been firebombed at least a dozen times. 'You've got attacks on journalists, councillors, prison officers: Scotland's isn't a narco-state, but this is how these things start. And, too often, the SNP's ethos has been to justify and explain, not to punish and deter – it is a social work mentality. The gangs must be rubbing their hands with glee,' he said. Meanwhile, in Spain, there are fears that violence could escalate further and Ana Mula, the mayor of Fuengirola, is calling for more resources to combat organised crime. She said: 'We live in a world and at a time where crime knows no borders. In places like the Costa del Sol, we're seeing developments that, as they spread, inevitable affect us. We need much greater involvement from the state on this issue.' Reports last month claimed the Lyons gang was seeking a truce in the feud. Given the recent events in Fuengirola that now seems unlikely. As Findlay points out, though, Saturday's shootings might not be connected to the Scottish feud at all, but rather the larger, global players that the Lyons gang is now part of. 'It could have been the work of their long-standing enemies in Scotland,' he said. 'But, out in Spain, they are swimming with much bigger sharks – who may be even more ruthless than they are.' 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Yahoo
2 days ago
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Teenager charged over alleged murder bid on boy, 15
A teenager has been charged over the alleged attempted murder of another boy in Glasgow. The 15-year-old was found seriously injured on Denbeck Street in Shettleston at about 22:30 last Thursday. He was taken to the Queen Elizabeth University Hospital for treatment and has since been discharged. Police said a boy, 15, had been charged over the incident and is due to appear in court later. Inquiries into the incident are ongoing. It comes after a spate of violence involving young people across the central belt in recent months. Amen Teklay, 15, died following an alleged attack in Glasgow's Maryhill in March. Three teenagers, aged 14, 15 and 16 have been charged over his death. Kayden Moy, 16, died following a large disturbance on Irvine Beach in May. Three teenagers, aged between 14 and 17, have been charged in connection with his death. A 16-year-old boy was also charged with attempted murder over the alleged stabbing of a 17-year-old on Portobello Beach in Edinburgh days before. Justice minister Angela Constance described recent events as a "youth violence epidemic" after announcing an increase in funding for a centre aimed at tackling crime. The Scottish Violence Reduction Unit will receive a 7% funding increase to about £1.2m in an effort to address the underlying caused of violence. Constance said the Scottish government's approach to youth violence was focused on education, adding "effective punishment for offences, appropriate police powers and sustained school and community engagement with young people" were also in place. She added: "We have made it quite clear that no-one should every carry any weapon including knives at any time, anywhere."
