Heir
Coughlin |
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January 2002: It is
3.00 a.m. November 2001. The secene is a bar in Wembley,
north london. The peace of an English winter's night
is broken as gun-shots ring out. Three lie injured.
Once again, Harlesden has confirmed its' reputation
as the gun capital of Britain. Turf war has broken
out amongst the Yardies-of the first and second generation-in
the Capital. The innocent have suffered in this ongoing
war. Many have died.
Harlesden - the West Bronx of London - is the place
where bodies have sometimes literally littered the
streets. People are shot with machine guns in broad
daylight and stabbed in full view in high street shops.
The gun culture has taken hold. Black on black violence
is increasing, has increased and shows no signs of
diminishing.
London North West Ten is the home of the Heinz factory.
It is also home to fifty seven of ethnic groups. From
a petit bourgeois inner suburb, serving the moneyed
classes of nearby Notting Hill and Holland Park, it
has slowly, but surely, drifted down-market. First
the immigrant Irish came. Their presence can still
be seen in the bars in the High Street. Then the West
Indians spilling over from Ladbroke Grove and, today,
asylum seekers from the Horn of Africa and elsewhere.
The houses reflect the former glory; today many are
split up into flats. The namesof the roads too: Military
heroes like Wrottesley and literary allusions too
in Wlyde way.
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NW10
is nothing if not an area of contrasts.Wembley
and Harrow nearby have large Anglo-Asian communities.
They have built Britain's biggest Hindu temple,
the Swami Narayan Mission temple. It is a tribute
to sacrifice and service. It has real Gold leaf
on its roof. The Diwali festival there in November
attracts fifty thousand worshippers.
There are huge public housing projects too. The
Stonebridge Park estate in the north-on the Harlesden/Wembley
frontier- is an urban wasteland, a monument to
misguided public policy. Massive tower blocks,
few communal facilties, even the pubs are shut
and boarded up. It is a fertile breeding ground
for deprivation and crime. |
Throw drugs and money into this volatile mixture
and violence soon emerges. The white powder economy-cocaine
and crack cocaine-is big in London. Those who control
it have fortunes at their feet. The fast life-cars,women,
jewellery, the lot-theirs to be had. The Jamaican
'Yardies'-so called because of being formed in back-yards
fill this void. Trans-shipment is not that difficult
from their homeland, one of the recognised entre-pots
for coke to reach western europe from the growing
fields of Colombia and Venezuela. It has proved lucrative.
But as with all territory, it needs protecting. That
has increasingly meant using firearms(which are illegal
in the UK).
In fact, Yardie style gangsters fighting for control
of the multi-million pound crack cocaine market are
now the most difficult and violent criminals faced
by British police, an officer said recently.
Commander Alan Brown, head of Scotland Yard's Flying
Squad, said the scale and nature of the gangs' activities
had increased significantly in recent months, with
many incidents characterised by shootings for the
most trivial of perceived slights.
In the white powder economy, it's a dog eat dog world.
Thieves and honour do not readily mix.
"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 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."
There are just two hundred Yardies active in London,
according to journalist Tony Thompson who has written
extensively about them, yet they have been held responsible
for at least sixty murders, many since the Turf Wars
started in earnest just two years ago. Seven were
killed in just one six month period. The circumstances
of some killings read like the annals of Chicago at
the time of Capone:
January 2000: Dean
Samuels-stabbed to death in a mobile phone shop. He
was taken by air ambulance to hospital but was DOA-dead
on arrival. Four black youths fled the sceneof the
crime.
June 2000: Albert Lutterodt
found dead in Acton,West London after neighbours reported
hearing a volley of shots.
July 2000: Dean Roberts,
a drug dealer, shot down in a hail of bullets sent
by enemies unknown from a mach 10 machine gun. That
is called a 'spray and pray'-it fires 1200 rounds
a minute.
August 2000: Fifty
one year old sound engineer, Henry Lawes, gunned down
by five men outside his home in Harlesden. He slipped
after the initial volley and was finished off on the
ground in cold blood.
It is hardly surprising that the average life expectancy
of a 'Yardie' in London is said to be just thirty-five.
According to figures released recently, 21 people
were murdered in London during 2001 in drug related
shootings, marking a slight rise from the year before.
All the victims were black. There were 67 other attempted
murders. Although the gangsters have previously concentrated
their activity in five "hotspot" London boroughs,
there are signs that their violence is spreading all
over the capital.
Commander Alan Brown, head of Scotland Yard's Flying
Squad, said the scale and nature of the gangs' activities
had increased significantly in recent months, with
many incidents characterised by shootings for the
most trivial of perceived slights. Mr Brown, who leads
the task force Operation Trident against "black on
black" crime provided the following examples:
� One man's sarcastic remark about another's hairstyle
� A man mistakenly treading on the foot of a gangster
in a nightclub
� Entry to a nightclub refused by a doorman. In this
incident, the man trying to enter returned and was
alleged to have fired a gun randomly at other people
waiting in the queue. Eight people were injured
� A row between a DJ and a party goer on New Year's
Day. The gunman fired at the DJ, hitting his neck.
The bullet then passed through a wall and hit another
man. Both men died
Locals, in the West Indian takeaways and bars, talk
glibly about another shooting as an everyday thing.
But, for some, living in gunland is traumatic. Hazel,
who was too scared to give her full name, peered cautiously
out of the doorway of her terraced home in St Mary's
Road in Harlesden. She used one hand to hold back
her eager four-year-old son as she scanned the scene
for potential gunmen. After checking the coast was
clear, she marched her son across the road and into
the relative safety of a butcher's shop.
"'I left Jamaica in 1981 because I couldn't take
the violence no more," said Hazel. "During the election,
more than 900 people were killed. It was like living
in a war. Gunshots every night, blood on all the street
corners. Young boys in cars driving up and down with
their guns out of the windows. I lost people that
I loved. I couldn't take it."
But moving to London did not mean she had escaped
the violence of the Jamaican Yardie gangs.
"'At first, Harlesden was paradise, a home from home,"
said Hazel. "'We had our food, we had our music and
many, many friends. Life was good. But now the violence
has followed us here. I don't hardly use the room
at the front of the house no more. Them boys don't
care."
Violence corrupts and gun violence corrupts absolutely.
London's Metropolitan Police set up a special operation
to deal with the Yardies. Operation Trident started
in Brixton, South London but has since widened its
remit to encompass all of the capital including
Harlesden. There have been some successes, some convictions,
but the code of omerta and simply not 'grassing-up'
within the black community is very strong.
July 2000: Shots ring
out into the queues outside the Chicago night club
in Peckham, South London. Eight lie injured. Two thousand
revellers are in the club at the time yet when the
police sweep for information, the wall of silence
is stunning. Three hundred and fifty claim to have
been "in the toilet" at the time of the shooting,
two hundred and seventy are questioned but yield little
of use and hundreds simply give false addresses. It's
called survival.
But what is more disturbing to the police is the
growth of home grown 'Yardies', second and third generation
children of the diaspora who set themselves up in
lookalike gangs. 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. 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.
Another 'everyday' London incident: A 19-year-old
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 night-club. The front-line is all over
town.
And the potential for the very young to get involved
is very great. According to Mr Brown there was a pool
of youngsters, aged 11 and 12, who would be drawn
into the gang culture unless communities pulled together
to try to stop the criminals in their tracks.
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