Except that the UK press using the word were quoting a US cop. In the US, the word refers to East Asian, aka Oriental, such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, etc.
Also, the assailants would have been referred to as white here in the US.
Where do you get that?
In the US, if they were wogs, the PC press would omit mention of their ethnicity, and normal people would refer to them as Middle Eastern or worse.
I was thinking about Zimmerman being called a white Hispanic and just went with it.