Gangland Britain: Who Are The Top Dogs Now? (Crime Documentary) | Real Stories

real stories tapes true crime is your new true crime podcast fix in our first season we'll explore suspicious deaths at a california hospital and a skydiver landing dead on a suburban driveway with a bag containing guns drugs and night vision goggles to join our investigation search and subscribe to real stories tapes true crime on apple podcasts spotify or wherever you find your podcasts [Music] over the course of this series we've been looking at gangs old and new from across some of britain's cities gangs have risen and fallen they prosper now as they've always done they continue to find new ways of making money and fending off their rivals we've seen how you joined gangs how they operated what they stood for we've learned how they've moved from gambling into clubs and protection and now into drug importation and dealing but is there a pattern to criminality are there similarities between these gangs or are they solely products of their era we're going to look at the reasons why we have gangs how they make their money how they hold on to it and what has been done to try and break them [Music] gangs have always been with us and it's easy to see why they offer self-preservation comradeship a sense of belonging for some joining a gang means prestige and for a few it means power but there are countless reasons beyond the pak instinct why people join gangs in the 19th century living in one of britain's industrial cities it was an alternative family a home on the street away from the overcrowded slum the gang could also give you respect but that you'd have to earn on the streets of manchester in the late 1800s you could earn respect as a scuttler long before there were hoodies and scalli's there were the scuttlers the first youth cult i'm about to meet a man who i hope can tell me a little bit about them andrew davis is a historian and author who has researched the gangs of manchester sir andrew tell me about the scuttles what were the scuttles scholars were gang members they were they were young lads working class lads aged in their teens more or less from the age of leaving school up to sort of 20 21 and scotland was a very specific term it meant you were a gang member it meant you had a certain look it's a slang term with its origins on the streets so what would they do would they be stealing or were they running gambling or scotland gangs really are territorial gangs they're neighborhood or or street gangs and really they're fighting gangs rather than criminal gangs they're usually named after the street maybe the the thor affair where they would gather on the corners so it will be an area-based name so you might have a gang from hope street salford the most famous gangs had more exotic names there was a gang from ancoats from bengal street who went under the name the bengal tigers so they're looking to invest a little bit of glamour something exotic in their activities is that all it was really about sort of just respect and um and power it's it's very much about pride in your area and it's about pride in yourself and your friends as well so a lot of this is about keeping young people from other districts outside what you define as your patch scuttlers became the first youth cult they had a distinctive look short hair but with a long fringe worn in a parting and plastered down with soap on the forehead over the left eye [Music] the dress signaled to everyone that a scuttler was no ordinary working class lad but a street fighter [Music] it was one thing to look dandy and impressive but some of their dress had other more vicious functions for example these clogs heavy pointed with brass toe caps good for close-up combat their belts were another part of their armory they would have a heavy brass buckle which they'd sharpen along the edge so it became like a blade it also banged nails or bolts through the end to add more weight when swung it was said that a hit from one of these could split a man's skull and was the fighting just random just people just getting angry and attacking people or was this there was an order to the way they fought i think it's very very targeted one of the things that um you realize about about scotland is they all know each other the gangs would actually chalk the threat or the invitation to fight that they chalk the the challenge either on a wall or maybe on the pavement so there will be a day and a time saturday three o'clock a delphi against greengate so it really is battling by appointment they're very often carrying and they're using knives as well but it's very very rare that anybody gets killed so generally what they're looking to do is to maim or to scar the scuttlers fought for little but their own respect they simply like fighting they liked proving how tough they were they didn't make any money out of it there was no master plan but in other cities street gangs could be very different glasgow was once the most overcrowded city in britain as well as the poorest in the late 1800s immigrants from ireland fleeing the second wave of the potato famine came to work on clydeside they formed large catholic neighborhoods in the protestant city for many their arrival was unwelcome competition and created resentment hatred and in some cases violence one area which became a flashpoint bordering catholic districts was called bridgeton or brigton and this was home to an infamous protestant gang the brigton boys soon to be known as the billy boys they took their name from william of orange the dutch-born king who in the 17th century annexed northern ireland and installed the protestant church the billy boys were devotees of king billy [Music] legend has it that the gang was formed in 1924 by a man who came from this street his name was william fullerton billy fullerton who formed them according to the story was beaten up by a gang of catholics when he was in his late teens and he decided that he would form his own gangs to basically anything they could do he could do bloodier in the 1930s the rivalry between the protestant and catholic was played out on the football pitch with the west of the town supporting rangers in the east supporting celtic in spite of the weather we saw celtic trying their skill against the rangers [Applause] zelda kicked off and run the billy boys use their loyalty to rangers as a way of attacking catholics real trouble breaking out on the terraces here they would infiltrate the rangers fans to provoke battles with celtic supporters the sectarian gangs of glasgow like the billy boys were not alone immigrants always faced opposition across britain's cities the irish settled in liverpool and also by the docks in london but there wasn't just the irish italian immigrants settled in clarkenwell russian jews in whitechapel and even today there are still immigrant gangs around the country tensions could snap at any time in southall west london in 1976 they did just that with the stabbing of an asian student by a white gang young asians who have put up with attacks from teddy boyz now had to face much more powerful groups like the national front the asian community defended itself by forming gangs i'm meeting up with a man who has done a lot of research into this journalist and crime writer tony thompson first of all tell me about when did uh gangs first emerge in this area well around the south area they really started around the late 60s early 70s which was around the same time that we started to get a large population of people from the indian subcontinent coming to this part of london and setting up shop here so in the early days when they were being here there was a lot of racism a lot of people being attacked by sort of people at the national front and so on and they started to defend themselves by gathering together in vigilante games to defend themselves against the racists but what happened was once once the threat from the races started to fade a little bit those gangs stayed around started attacking each other and started praying on the local community themselves and it was the same story in other cities during the 1970s the black community in birmingham felt threatened just tell me a bit about why gang started in birmingham well originally the gang certainly the black and asian gangs started off as could say almost vigilante gangs there was a big problem with skinheads and the right wing in certain parts of birmingham and these gangs formed essentially to look after their own communities but in 1981 tensions exploded in vicious race riots heavy-handed policing only inflamed the aggression on the streets as groups of young black youths began to take the law into their own hands it kind of empowered a lot of the young black kids and that they thought well hang on we've rioted we managed to put the police on the back foot you know we can show some force when we want to eventually as the right-wing threat dissipated they kept that organization together and it became more of a criminal network as drugs died coming into the community they used those bonds and those links they had and directed towards criminal efforts instead once gangs have become established it's not always easy to decommission them what may have started as a means of protection can also become a means of making money the revenues that can be brought in by using such a large number of loyal supporters can be too tempting to resist during the first world war times were tough for many living in the northern cities only the manufacture of armaments kept men in work the wages they brought home were just enough to keep their families alive their future what they could see of it was bleak their only ray of hope in such depressed times was gambling and in the city of sheffield that meant a game called pitch and toss with local historian jp bean i've come to see where the gangs here in the 1920s made their money this is sky edge an ideal place for pitch and toss which one of the most simple forms of gambling but here vast sums were bet a man called jack white who was a publican from barnsley was known to regularly bet 50 pounds on one single toss of the coins huge money the organizers of the ring took four shillings in the pound as a toll the taller ran the ring george mooney here was the taller so somebody put a pound on the pound went on the floor as the bet four shillings went in george mooney's pocket sheffield was not alone there were pitch and toss rings all around the country gambling was big business and in the 1920s there was no greater gambling business than horse racing turning over 500 million pounds a year racetracks became an industry for the gangs and the biggest gang who made the most was an outfit from birmingham called the bromagem after the first world war racecourses were the only legal gambling places [Music] but the bulging satchels of the bookmakers attracted criminal gangs wanting a piece of the action and the brahmajams wanted the biggest slice i've come to meet a former member of the mets flying squad police historian dick kirby dick gary delighted to meet you so i suppose the first question is you know what did the brahmajums uh see in racecourses well why were they here well they saw an awful lot of money in those days before the first world war practically anybody could set up as a bookmaker there were no real rules and regulations and uh the bookmakers just paid out if they could afford it and if they didn't they hired bodyguards to protect them from enraged punters who wanted their winnings yeah the brumagem soon got into every illegal trick in the book as historian carl chin explains blokes would go up to somebody and say hey to a bucky you're the bookie oh give us ten bob for poor old freddie he's just come out to nick alfred i didn't come out to nick alf's just going into that give us ten bob or else even cruder if you don't give me a pound i'm going to turn you upside down right so a lot of bookmakers hired minders tough boxers it was night rules see and so whether you were bookmakers or punters if gangs came along and preyed upon you you were struggling and the gang that posed the greatest danger and controlled the most race courses was the brahmajam's the gang charged bookmakers as much as 50 percent of their profits for the privilege of being left unmolested in turn some of the bookies began to use the gang services to dissuade winning punters from pressing their claims for payment you didn't have to run a national horse racing racket to make money there was a living to be made out of good old honest thieving if a gang had enough men out on the street and not all gang members were men one gang called the 40 thieves from south london was run by a formidable woman called alice diamond in 1916 age 20 alice diamond became queen of the 40 thieves and would transform them dressed in specially tailored clothes complete with hidden pockets diamond and her crew raided some of the west end's biggest stores debenhams d h evans selfridges and whiteley's diamonds girls dress smart they never wore any stolen goods and they gave the impression they were cut from finer cloth but underneath their glamorous outfits were hidden surprises their jackets had deep inside pockets to contain plundered goods tailored cummerbunds muffs skirts and even hats sewn with hidden pockets one key innovation was to wear extra voluminous knickers to hide their ill-gotten gains they had a name for the knickers yeah they were called hoisting knickers like from two hoists and so that's how they got the name the oysters but that's what i like because hoister becomes oyster if you drop the age that's the oyster knickers is great i love that i'm sure we can make them now [Music] they like to steal small exclusive things then there was lingerie silk designer clothes furs leather goods it all just vanished how would they do a raid on say one of the shops here well what would happen they'd arrive probably by car and park somewhere sneaky and the car was very important it needed a big boot so they could go backwards and forwards and load up and they would all carry identical type bags and gradually go in the shops one by one the first two would start loading the gear the next person to come in would swap the bag and take the others out and so there's only one chance of one person being arrested while the others gradually moved around them and sometimes they create a distraction so they pretend to faint or if they were taken ill and then cause a big havoc in the in the store and so people were looking at the wrong thing but actually a lot a lot of the technique was about rolling the stuff very small and packing it in and you you have to remember nowadays we have very different types of technology we have cctv we have all sorts of detection networks then it was a free-for-all some gangs were not as subtle as the 40 thieves one gang who came to prominence were certain members of the turkish cypriot family from southeast london there were four brothers bakir mehmet dennis and dogen in the 80s the arabs were kings they were running everything they seemed to be getting away with everything even when they got nick they got off they really were becoming legendary figures but then in late 1990 everything started to unravel they decided to hold up a security van in ryegate in surrey what they didn't realize was that one of their associates had tipped off the police who in fact encouraged the entire robbery to still go ahead on the 27th of november two of the gang set off they tracked the securitical van on its way to rygate the van was carrying large amounts of money to branches of barclays bank memis and dennis arif were on the job themselves along with dennis's brother-in-law and a hardened armed robber called kenny baker they all tooled up with an assortment of guns [Music] but unknown to them the police were all on red alert the sakura core van had become the bait and the arabs the catch in the centre of ryegate the securical van pulled over and came to a halt the security van has stopped the man and woman security guard had got out to go and get a coffee and the arabs and their friends swoop and they swoop with a vengeance they were wearing ronald reagan mask which must have been absolutely terrifying because the police have turned up because of course they knew about it they were waiting they were there planning to nick them all this was in commuter belt town south of london the police are not going to let go they're going to get this mob if whatever happens and unfortunately one of the other robbers baker was shot dead the aras were nicked um and this was a pivotal moment for them it was a pivotal moment because it was the beginning of the decline of the arabs because it broke the family up in a way they'd never been broken up before [Music] mimi and dennis together with their brother-in-law anthony downer were arrested kenny baker lay dead [Music] gangs made their fortune from just about every illegal practice going but drugs were always going to bring in the most money drugs changed the face of gangland britain some gangs like tutti nang poured all their money into heroin it all depended upon couriers trusted friends or families from the gang and usually women they would be flown out of heathrow to india or pakistan they would usually go for a few weeks and be able to visit their families and have a paid holiday but on their return they will bring back heroin boarding and body checks in pakistan could be easily avoided the gang wielded considerable power there officials could be bribed to turn a blind eye but it was the return trip to heathrow where the gang's ingenuity and planning will be critical with vigilant customs officials and the latest scanning devices it would be risky trying to smuggle the drugs through customs but the tutinang had a simple undetectable and foolproof solution when the couriers entered the baggage reclaim area they would slip off to the ladies toilets there they would remove the packages of heroin each courier had been given a key to the tampon dispenser here the drugs were hidden and the courier now totally clean could pass through customs and leave the airport [Music] now there was just one more link in the operation the gang had people employed at the airport as cleaners as soon as the couriers had cleared their job was now to move and pick up the drugs once in their hands it was no problem to take the drugs out of the airport with so many people regularly going back and forth nothing looked out of the ordinary this operation didn't raise any suspicions the tutti non were bringing in 10 kilos a day worth 100 000 pounds they did this for 10 years that's 365 million pounds docks and they open up all sorts of possibilities for gangs they did for liverpool mafia and for one gangster called curtis warren a leading figure in an international drug smuggling ring who controlled much of britain's cocaine business in 1991 warren flew to venezuela to set up a big cocaine shipment from the kali cartel just to give you an idea of the planning the cocaine was shipped inside 32 lead ingots this big it meant that they couldn't be x-rayed and to cut them open would take hours it's also said that warren knew the length of the drill bits that customs used 25 centimeters long now just take a look at this 25 centimeters means you can't get anywhere near the center it was with such ingenuity he made the liverpool mafia britain's first and most successful drug cartel when the ingots arrived in england customs cut one open but found nothing and let the shipment through only then were they tipped off that they contained cocaine but it was too late the ingots were already on their way to liverpool inside was a cocaine warren's cup was an estimated 87 million pound once a gang has cornered a market it has to control it it can't afford to let another gang push it off its turf [Music] gangs have always controlled their members and territory with threats and with violence any breach of loyalty could be dealt with in the most brutal way even by death the worst conflicts have taken place when a gang has split into two groups this divides not only the gang members but the territory as well putting both under intense scrutiny each side watching for an opportunity to provoke or attack the other gang feuds can last for decades the tit for tap violence that ensues often spills out endangering the lives of innocent people this is what happened in sheffield in the 1920s a gangster called george mooney had run a highly lucrative and illegal pitch and toss betting ring at sky edge above sheffield but when he slimmed down his operation by laying off some of his henchmen they formed a rival gang called the park brigade they were led by a man called sam garvin garvin was a bookmaker gambler and promoter of bare knuckle boxing matches he had amassed a string of convictions and prison sentences for assault illegal gaming con tricks and larceny garvin was a professional criminal first conviction in 1904 very well connected with local politicians when the first very decent council houses were built in sheffield he got one and there weren't many of them in the depths of the depression when everybody's living in poverty he drove and he drove a three liter bentley saloon now garvin's gang the park brigade would begin a vicious feud with the mooney gang and push gang warfare in sheffield to a new level of violence earning the city the name of little chicago they attacked one of the park brigade in his bed a man called bill furniss one saturday night in april 1923 he attacked him with hammers severely injured him never reported to the police but there were reprisals a few days later one of the park brigade was coming away from here away from the tossing ring and was slashed with razors over a hundred times wouldn't speak to the police wouldn't say i've done it all he'd say was i reckon they've spoiled me suit i reckon the head's bored it's suit but the vendetta between the two gangs would culminate in the most violent attack sheffield had ever seen it would be an innocent man a non-gang member called willian plummer who was going to experience just how ruthless sam garvin's park brigade could be princess street scene of the murder of william plummer tell me about william plummer who was he what did he do william plummer was 34 year old scotsman he'd come to sheffield after the first world war to work in the steel works father of three children he had no connection whatsoever with gangs but one evening plumber witnessed a violent fight one of mooney's men had been badly beaten and plumber had helped him to his feet unbeknown to him the rival gang led by sam garvin now saw this as a reason to make him a target around 20 of garvin's men hit plumber with pokers cautious a piece of lead on a string and this vicious weapon ironically called a life preserver a chair leg with nails in it although being badly beaten plummer managed to crawl back to the house but as he struggled towards the door he was then pounded repeatedly with a child scooter [Music] plummer had severe head injuries and two great wounds resembling banet thrust through his stomach and side he was taken to the royal infirmary where he died within minutes there'd been slashings that been shootings that had been bludgeonings but he was the first man to be killed it was the first murder of the sheffield gang wars it doesn't always have to be a split within a gang to create the violence rival gangs come up against the same brutality in the 1950s the craze were a new breed of criminal bringing with them a new type of violence extreme and unpredictable they were so terrifying they made some gangs like the watney streeters simply run away this is where reggie ronnie billy jones and bobby ramsay came looking for the what mistreaters who had done up ramsey [Music] what happened was the street has got wind that the craze mob was on its way in the front was a fellow who got nothing to do with it but was related to the street his man called terry martin out the back go the what the streeters whom the craze are really looking for and there is for old terry martin in front uh left really more or less on his own he's dragged out and given a stabbing with the beard by her and possibly bobby ramsey it's difficult to know who really does what but they all give him a terrible hammer just here on this channel here on this pavement yeah and where the watney street is hopefully camped yes very sensibly more recent gangs who deal with drugs are just as violent drug dealing kick-starts a miserable cycle of addiction crime and violence for the gains lower down in the supply chain control of their drug turf is crucial at street level the violence they dish out is to be seen and feared sometimes it spills out ruining the lives of innocent people this is what happened in manchester with the gooch gang this was the gooch game leader colin joyce known as the general and this is lee amos the other top man they've been described by one senior couple as psychopaths who shoot for fun these guys were at war with the doddington gang and alongside crew and in five years of shooting 250 people were wounded and 27 were killed these tit-for-tat killings culminated in two brutal shootings they would shock not only manchester but the whole country becoming a landmark in gang violence and ultimately bringing about the downfall of the gooch gang our story begins at 6 15th of june 2007 right here on the corner of anton road alongside south manchester a young man called ukel chien was gunned down in a roadside ambush i want to find out how this happened how an innocent man got caught up in a gangland shooting so we're here on anton road though look how chin got shot here right yeah he was he'd been driving about with some friends that day colin joyce one of the senior members of uh the gooch gang was driving up and down looking for alongside crew member or associate to go after somewhere along danson road he spots yuko chin the vehicle that he's in he was parallel to the renault that the uk is driving and opens fire and ukel's killed why because he thought he was part of alongside you came up in an area where gang membership simply defined by who your friends are you might have friends who are more involved than you are but you become associated with their gang because they're your friends they might be the friends that you went to primary school with they might be the friends that you've grown up playing football with but that's enough to label you and if you happen to be driving these lands about on a particular day and your face becomes associated with them then it's a question of perception that was enough to get you killed unfortunately just as manchester had the gooch gang birmingham had the johnson crew the callous displays of violence will shock the city on the 2nd of january 2003 a revenge attacked by a rival mob called the burger bar boys would result in the murder of two innocent girls and shocked the city and the nation [Music] the incident was sparked when the burger bar boys spotted their rivals the johnson crew at a party held at a hair salon they decided to attack them in a drive-by shooting the woman who ran the hair salon had had this new year's day party for the last few years it was well known so they tagged along you know and the party by all accounts was you know a normal affair there was nothing unusual about it until the early hours of the morning when people reported that the atmosphere started getting very dark there was rumors around that there's going to be trouble something's going to happen the car pulled into position not far from the party inside three members of the berger bar boys were armed one of them with a mach 10 machine gun at four o'clock in the morning the place was winding up people were piling out the back and basically just getting some fresh out [Music] so the party spills out onto the street within a split second 23 empty cartridges are spewed out from the machine gun charlene ellis was the first to die hit three times leticia shakespeare was also killed hit four times i went to see letitia's mother marcia who had to go and identify her daughter only hours after the shooting as soon as i went into the room i could see um leticia she had a hair piece on that day and i could see that was like snitched to one side i thought with the sister's t-shirt so i came round um to have a look and she was there on the bed but her eyes were wide open really i've never seen her eyes that wide open yeah and i still couldn't absorb that she was dead i still thought she was alive i said no she's alive but eyes are open she's got to be alive and when i was walking around and looking and when i looked because the eyes were so open you could see like where like the blood shot like this initially just just killed her she didn't have time to even close her eyes um that aura stopped with me for about four weeks i kept having nightmares um panic attacks um just couldn't i thought no that hasn't happened i didn't really think it happened you can't believe it you just can't take it in when something like that happens can you no i couldn't to the gangs violence is just a way of life most of us remain unaware of it but when it flares up and takes an innocent life we are barely able to comprehend how this can be happening on our streets how do you eliminate gangs one way is to remove their source of income look what happened to the prohibition of alcohol in america when liquor was legalized again the gangsters were forced to move off into other business another method was to target the gangsters themselves this was the strategy used in the 1920s to eliminate the gangs of sheffield the local authorities were under pressure they'd be been ignoring the issues for a couple of years it became apparent that they were going to have to do something the police formed a special duties squad colloquially known as the flying squad they appointed a new chief constable he would become britain's first gang buster his name was percy silito aged 38 silito was an unorthodox choice he'd left england to become a trooper in the african police working in a tough and brutal regime which kept control over native tribes now back in england silito would apply the same methods he knew the name of every police officer in the force they knew that they could go out and take war to the gangs and that the chief constable would be right behind them so why was this any different to the police force before they were bigger guys they were bigger guys and they went out they went to publicans and they told them don't serve gang members if you serve gang members we'll oppose your license if they saw gang members in the pubs they hauled them out and battered them do we know that yes there was no human rights so this was just another gang really effectively they'd be they fight fire with fire steel with steel silito brought in men like pc pat garrity who stood six foot five and could hold seven tennis balls in one hand silito also introduced the european jiu-jitsu champion harry hunter to train the force in self-defense after seven weeks each man could deal with sixty methods of attack they flying squad threw people through windows they threw them through doors without opening them first they battered people in public view they didn't they took them around the back occasionally but they didn't take any prisoners if they needed if they didn't need to silito was seen at the time as a great success he became britain's first gangbuster and was also sent up to glasgow during the 1930s the billy boys remained the most powerful gang in glasgow marching behind their leader billy fullerton they set out to taunt the catholic neighborhoods the billy boys came marching down this street norman street and flaming the catholic locals with their music [Music] a large catholic razor gang known as the norman conks who lived in this street often prepared to retaliate when they heard the billy boys approaching the norman conks knew they were coming heard they were coming because they weren't creeping up on them and would ambush them so from the windows from roofs if they could get onto them they would attack them through missiles throw bottles through dirt anything at all human waste and then down in the street there would be a battle royal going on but by 1935 the glasgow police now under the command of gangbuster percy silato set out to ambush the gangs police mounted a charge led by silito's cossacks as his force were known it was the beginning of the end for the billy boys silito ordered the mounted police to celtic park together with two large covered vans filled with policemen they hid down a side street there they waited but they were clever with it they didn't weighed in at the height of battle they waited until both sides uh had more or less wound each other out and then the police would come in and mop it up in a far more ferocious way in occasion this road here became littered with casualties the police have broken up the parade scoring an historic victory according to silito only one of the billy boys escaped without injury it was elijah cooper the big drum player who hid in his drum until he could surrender peacefully today gang-related crimes can be the most complicated to solve often it's hard to work out just who's innocent and who's guilty who's in one faction and who's in another in birmingham police officers collected 1 300 statements recovered 40 vehicles and put tens of thousands of man-hours into bringing down the murderers of charlene ellis and leticia shakespeare to put away the gooch gang in manchester prosecution lawyers scrutinized fifty thousand pages of evidence eighty thousand mobile phone calls and offered unprecedented protection to witnesses in order for them to talk it paid off the gucci gang was put away for a very long time only with this level of investigation can gangs be brought to justice even curtis warren who often appeared to be one step ahead with his drug trafficking empire was eventually cornered on october the 24th 1996 dutch what units raided a warehouse in holland and warren's home and through a complex kind of undercover their surveillance operation involving wiretaps they managed to catch him red-handed bringing in another super load of cocaine the top five men in warren's drug ring were among the 10 men dragged from their beds and arrested the police confiscated 400 kilograms of cocaine 60 kilos of heroin 500 kilos of cannabis and 50 kilos of ecstasy their street value 125 million pounds simultaneously british police searched premises across northwest england to arrest the gang's other cohorts he goes to trial it stacks up and he goes to jail for a long time [Music] during this series i've been walking around some of the estates i saw the same problems that existed 100 years ago i see kids with nothing to do locked into cul-de-sacs that they just can't escape from it's almost impossible for them to go anywhere unnoticed many are from traditional immigrant families desperate to find their own identity out on the street where it's all about respect and sometimes violence so where do we go from here where's the percy silito of the 21st century well let me tell you it's right here strathclyde's violence reduction unit i'm about to meet karen mccluster she's a director of this unit which she set up in 2008. she's responsible for bringing about a radical new approach in tackling gangs she did what no one had ever dared do before she hauled in all the gangs and laid down the law to them we wanted to try and make a big change because you can't just take 10 people it has to be about hundreds to achieve a real big shift in going so how'd you do that we had to get the parents we had to get the schools we had to convince them to come in so you were putting rival gangs in the same way all of them all of them i mean this was about you know this was it's a really risky strategy and the chief stood up and he and we flashed our pictures around the room and we said we know who you are we know who you live and and he said i'm so powerful i can have them all outside your front door if i still wish my cops you know i can make your life really difficult it's not hard you know but we want you to stop we want you to stop this because i don't want to go and see your parents and tell them that you're dead or they can't arrest you for a murder and then we get a sergeant to stand up and he says you boys might now know what you're doing but let me let me tell you what i get in my my surgery and you should be showing the pictures and some of them are really graphic but but that's what he says young and we have some of the worst cases of facial injury anywhere in the world here they cannot look at it and we have a few fainters and and then i suppose the the best and the worst part is we get a mum to stand up and it is just unless you've seen it it's very difficult to explain okay she stands up and she says you boys might not care about yourself but here's what happened to my son when i cradled him when he died and i go into his room every single day and i will never get over it it's destroyed my husband it's destroyed my family and i cared about my son and you could hear a pin drop in the courtroom and you can hear them you can hear them so bang in the back because regardless of how beleaguered some of these families are they love their mothers yeah and it's the most powerful thing ever and we they then say make a choice you can make a choice here and the really interesting thing is for lots of people that we deal with they've got no choice about where they're born what parents are born to what school they go to even what game they go into this sometimes the first time in their life that they've had a choice and it is amazing how many of them stand up in the court and say i want to i tell you i can't i'm shocked at what i've seen in there karen off camera showed us some cctv footage of some gang violence but real gang violence it kind of hit home what this show is all about it was just sickening to see kids acting like that and it's places like this that we're working towards kind of fixing the problem i'm still not convinced that it's a problem that can be fixed i think it goes a lot deeper down than just the one gang you know trying to take knives away or i think it's ingrained the problem listen we can only hope [Applause] a hundred years ago lads on the street in a poor area had few prospects and no real voice or rights joining a gang gave them a sense of belonging the authorities pinpointed poor housing lack of family control and boredom as key causes this still holds true today but the big difference now is that many gangs deal in drugs and the drugs they sell contaminate their neighborhood blighting the futures of those who touched them gangs will only stop selling drugs when the demand is removed and only education or a change in the law can alter that many of the cities we've looked at in the course of this series have seen major gangs put away for a very long time and with targeted policing education and social initiatives there's been a fall in violent gang crime let's hope it stays that way [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Real Stories

Views: 702,309

Keywords: British gang history, Real Stories, crime family dynamics, criminal empire evaluation, criminal enterprises, criminal money-making tactics, criminal organizations, criminal underworld, criminal world insight, dangerous criminals, gang influence, gang warfare, gangland reportage, gangs in Britain, gangster lifestyle, modern-day gangsters, street gangs, underworld economics study, underworld power dynamics, urban gang life, violent gangs analysis

Id: 7mm5jgvamnc

Length: 47min 17sec (2837 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 22 2021