- The Observer,
- Sunday August 26 2001
Arriving at Heathrow, he breezed through customs. Even if he had been stopped, there would have been no evidence of any wrongdoing: the thousands of pounds he made during his 'holiday' crime spree had been safely banked before he left Jamaica.
The trip earlier this year by the man, a key member of a London gang which is active in the drug trade and suspected of involvement in a number of gangland executions, was powerful evidence of a startling new trend.
'On the street, no one really talks about Yardies any more,' says Deputy Assistant Commissioner Mike Fuller, head of Operation Trident, the Met's high-profile initiative against drug-related violent crime. 'That's not what they call themselves. It's all crews and posses.
'We still have some Jamaicans involved but the vast majority of the shootings we are seeing now are the result of conflicts between rival gangs of British-born blacks. In fact, we now have a situation where members of some of the British crews are expanding their operations and travelling out to Jamaica to commit crimes there.'
According to the Jamaica Constabulary Force, such crimes range from robbery and drug dealing to assault and attempted murder.
A new generation of young guns, many of them still teenagers and almost all of them under 25, have modelled themselves on the original Yardies and now match them in brutality, cold-bloodedness and sheer bravado, particularly in the capital. Shots are now fired in London daily and incidents involving handguns are running into double figures every week. Feuds that would once have been solved by fists or knives are now settled by the bullet.
Earlier this month a 19-year-old was dragged from his car after a chase through west London, pistol-whipped about the head and shot in the leg. The following day a 20-year-old man was charged with three counts of attempted murder and other gun offences after a shooting rampage through London's West End in which two bystanders received gunshot wounds.
The incident allegedly began after an argument with a bouncer at a nightclub. A week later, Michael Cabey was shot dead as he sat on a wall in Rossington Street, Clapton, close to the area of London dubbed 'murder mile' because of the large concentration of shootings. Last week a man in his twenties was shot dead by two gunmen on a motorcycle as he walked through Pickets Lock in Edmonton; a few hours later a man in Brixton was shot in the leg.
The latest incidents come during a year in which a car outside a primary school was sprayed with automatic gunfire; a deputy head was pistol-whipped in his own school's dining room; and 14-year-old boys have been reported to be carrying weapons in broad daylight on the streets of Harlesden, north London.
A pre-emptive crackdown on known troublemakers in the run-up to this weekend's Notting Hill Carnival - a magnet for many of London's most violent black gangsters - led to four arrests on Thursday night. After stopping a car in west London, officers recovered a semi-automatic shotgun and several cartridges. Three of those arrested were just 19 years old, their companion was 21.
'Children come out of school talking about guns,' says Sam, a former youth worker on the Stonebridge estate in north London. 'The mentality is so much more vicious now. They don't talk about beating each other up. They talking about killing each other. The simple fact is that with a gun, you are someone, you can hold your own. Without one, you are a dead man.'
Ten years ago, the vast majority of the victims of black-on-black violence were Jamaican and living here illegally. Today, they are almost all British.
'My son wasn't a gangster,' says Eherta Selassie-Tikur whose eldest son, Affa, was found floating in a canal with four bullets in the back of his head last August. He was 21 years old. 'He was just an ordinary kid. He got into selling drugs because everyone here gets into selling drugs. I pleaded with him to stop dealing but he just didn't listen.'
It is a story that is becoming all too familiar. In April two young men - Wayne Henry, 19, from Hackney, and Corey Wright, 20, from Enfield - were ambushed soon after leaving Chimes nightclub in their blue BMW convertible. They were caught in a hail of bullets and the driver, who was fatally injured, lost control of the car and hit three women pedestrians before crashing into a night bus. Their parents had also watched in horror as, rejecting further education or employment, their sons opted for lives of crime.
Last month Godfrey Scott was found dead at home in Leytonstone. He had been shot in the neck. The following day the mutilated body of his flatmate Ray Samuels was discovered by a woman walking her dog in Epping Forest. Most of his skin had been sliced from his body and his tongue had been cut out - a sign that his killers believed him to be an informant. It appeared that he had been subjected to a lengthy torture session and finally died when a plastic bag was placed over his head.
'A lot of the time it comes down to simple economics,' says British-born Ryan, 26, now retired from the crime scene having been involved in numerous robberies and shootings in the notorious Harlesden and nearby Willesden, where he grew up.
'You want to sell drugs but you don't want to go to all the trouble of smuggling them into the country. It's much easier to find someone who has got the drugs, put a gun to their head and take them. Everyone does it. Most of the time it's OK, but every now and then you pick the wrong person and that's when wars start. I've seen people get shot, I've lost good friends to it, but you just accept it, it's the way things are.'
Last month Catherine Henderson, an accident and emergency consultant at Homerton Hospital, called for staff with experience from cities such as Johannesburg and New York to join her team because NHS workers were simply not equipped the deal with the flood of gunshot wounds pouring into the department. The original Yardies emerged from the Jamaican ghettos during an era of political and social turmoil. Disaffected youths who felt the future held little for them, they sought empowerment through the respect they gained as armed enforcers for political parties.
Three thousands miles away in the London of the new millennium, there are many parallels.
'The kids who end up getting involved in drug crime are often growing up in fatherless homes with no role models apart from the flashy image of local gangsters who flaunt their expensive cars and gold jewellery with pride,' says Sam. 'They feel the only way they will ever get something for themselves is to take it by force.'
The heroes of the crews and posses are the stars of UK garage, a style of music which in recent years has evolved from a soulful, melodic sound into a something altogether more disturbing, primarily under the influence of Jungle. This harder, brasher style is typified by current chart-toppers the So Solid Crew and the likes of 19-year-old duo Oxide and Neutrino whose track, 'Bound for Da Reload (Casualty)' hit the No 1 spot in the charts earlier this year. Asked about the violent connotations of some garage music, Neutrino said during an interview in March: 'Any club you go to that plays garage, there's always fighting, there are always shootings, but that happens at any club. It's just an excuse blaming it on the music.
'We could hold a night and play soulful garage and I guarantee you that there would be trouble there. It's all to do with people, not the music. People with enemies, people who want to rob people, whatever.' Two months later Neutrino himself became a victim of the violence, shot in the leg during a fracas outside a nightclub.
Proof that guns are considered de rigueur throughout clubland came earlier this month during closing time at the fashionable 'Sunday School' garage music night at Cynthia's club in south-east London.
As the crowd milled about the exit they saw a handgun pointed out of the passenger window of a car which was slowly cruising past. The gunman suddenly fired a volley of shots. It is no surprise that some people were rooted to the spot with fear while others screamed and ran for their lives. One man was wounded in the hand. But the real shock was that several clubbers calmly produced guns of their own and returned the fire.
There is also the case of 19-year-old Sherome Blair, refused entry to club EQ in Hackney, who returned with a gun and said to the bouncer who had dissed him: 'Well big man, what have you got to say for yourself now?' as he pulled the trigger. The bouncer was saved because his guard dog, a massive Japanese Atika, leapt on Blair as he fired and took the bullet for his master.
'It doesn't matter what you do for a living, when it comes to partying, you want to be seen in the best places wearing all your best clothes and your finest gold,' says Ryan. 'You want people to know what car you're driving and how much champagne you can afford to buy. If you're making money, you want people to know it.'
It is for this reason that Operation Trident is taking a keen interest in clubland security. The introduction of metal detectors at many venues has simply led to shootings occurring outside rather than inside clubs as the crew members leave their weapons in their cars.
Although a fifth of all guns seized by the police are replicas - the market in fakes has doubled since 1999 and is now worth nearly £10 million - the Met's Fuller believes that the culture they encourage often has potentially lethal consequences.
'Guns have become fashion accessories for many young people,' he says. 'We have a situation where young men have become desensitised and see the violent people in music and films as role models. I believe advertisers who promote some styles of music underestimate the effect their lyrics have on people.'
Trident's new five-year action plan targets 15-25 year-olds and aims to reach a subculture that traditional methods often miss. 'We are using flyers like those given out for raves,' says Fuller. 'We are advertising in nightclubs and estate radio stations. We have even asked government Ministers to look into granting us permission to advertise on pirate radio stations. There is little point in putting out the message on Newsnight if that is not going to reach your target audience.' The campaign is being supported by soul singer Mica Paris whose brother was shot dead in Croydon.
At the same time, Fuller has commissioned a safety review in order to deal with the frightening increase in the level of firepower being employed against his officers and an escalation in the number of incidents in which police officers are being shot at.
'We have been looking at countries like the US and Canada where firearms are more prevalent and seeing what training is given to their officers to see what lesson we can learn,' he says.
As a result, officers in the Met are set to be trained in techniques to enable them to recognise suspects carrying concealed weapons, either on their person or in their cars.
Fuller says such techniques of concealment are becoming increasingly sophisticated and represent an enormous danger to all officers, not just those engaged on Trident operations.
'On Trident, if we arrest someone who has a record of using weapons, we will use an armed team. It is the officers patrolling the streets on a daily basis who are more likely to encounter these characters who face the greatest level of risk. They are the ones who need the most protection.'
Key to Trident's long-term success is liaison with the community. In Lambeth, the borough in the front line of the drug-driven gun culture, there have been 408 firearms incidents in the past year including 105 where shots were fired.
'The fact that the drug trade and violence is in the hands of British-born blacks rather than Jamaicans is something that could easily have been predicted,' says Mike Franklin, chairman of the Lambeth Community Police Consultative Committee. 'The result is a community that lives in the midst of a climate of fear. At the same time people feel they get little credit for the good work that is done.
'We had a community-run gun amnesty last year and collected 28 guns and 3,000 rounds of ammunition. During the national amnesty just one gun was handed over in Lambeth. But no one talks about that, instead Lambeth is demonised. If these shootings were happening in Knightsbrige or Kensington there would be much more debate about possible solutions.'
Although London remains the centre of black-on-black violence, there are signs that the problem is rapidly spreading to other parts of the country, led by the original Jamaican Yardies who often feel unable to compete in the capital. Earlier this month the West Midlands police announced the launch of Operation Ventura, a spin-off from Trident, which aims to crack down on gangsters flooding into the region from Jamaica. Birmingham has seen more than 50 shootings in the past year and the number of armed officers in the region is set to be dramatically increased. The increase in violence, which has included dozens of murders, drive-by shootings and woundings, is blamed directly on turf wars between existing gangs and the newcomers.
Last month Jamaicans David Curling and Andrew Morrison were convicted at the High Court in Glasgow of setting up a drug-dealing operation in Edinburgh. Police sources say the two were key players in a gang trying to bring crack cocaine to the city. During the whole of 1999 there were four seizures of the cocaine derivative throughout Scotland. In the first six months of 2001, there were 34.
Back in London, the officers of Operation Trident are bracing themselves for remainder of the summer - traditionally the time of year that the majority of killings take place. The original Yardies were often dismissed as 'disorganised crime' but, according to Fuller, that is changing as the crews become better equipped and far better organised. 'One gang, The African Crew, were involved in one of the most sophisticated conflicts London has ever seen,' he says.
'We are not yet talking about levels of organisation on a par with the gangs of Los Angeles but these people should not be underestimated. The potential for innocent bystanders or police officers to get caught in the crossfire is always there. Our concerns remain as strong as ever.'
