My name is Omar Sharif, I was formerly involved in
gang activity in London, and this is how crime works. I was involved in gangs
from 2005 until 2011. I'm grateful that I'm still alive, although I've come very close to losing my life inside of gangs. I've had a bunch of knives
put to my neck, stomach. I've been stabbed twice in my right leg. I've had guns put to me. The structure of a gang is
almost like being in employment. OK? You have the newbies
that come involved. You then have management. You then have senior management. I got involved in a gang when
I was around 13 years old, actually from selling sweets in school. I was approached one day by
someone who said, you know, "How would you like to make more money?" And initially I knew what
he was talking about. I was scared, but when he
started mentioning things about, you know, you can be a man, you can provide for, help
your parents at home. And when you come from
a council flat estate and sometimes things are not easy, that kind of languaging
is enough to make you say, "Well, OK, can I actually do this?" When you join at the age that I did, you're considered a younger. A younger is the street soldier. A younger is the person who just gets employed into the gang. As part of the gang
initially as a younger, we're to hold certain things, we're to make deliveries,
we're to be on call. You're told where to go, what to do, not to look into bags,
not to look into boxes. It's just, you're a yes-man. And we look up to our olders. So our olders are the
people that we aspire to be. The ones that have the money, you know, at a time, that had the
Gucci belts, the Rolexes, the gold teeth, the nice cars. In a gang, the older is
not always in charge, but he is almost like middle management. So he takes control of what gets moved in and out of the area, who's selling what on certain streets, money management, distribution, and he'll have the -- he or
she. It can be a she as well. They'll have the connections
to the people at the top. So it's kind of a chain of command. So they're the ones who normally even groom people into a gang. They're the ones who,
when things go a bit sour and people get hit on, beaten up, sometimes kidnapped, sometimes threatened, it's the olders that they call. But I know from experience that even the olders, who we looked up to, they are speaking to people above them. I've seen people who are above the olders who look nothing like us, who don't sound like us at all. I can guess the jobs that they do, and they are very embedded into society, which was quite an eye-opener for me. Because I thought, even as
a young Black guy in London, it's only guys like me
that do this kind of stuff. But actually, we're just
their foot soldiers. So even our olders, who
we wanted to become, they're still the
yes-man for someone else. The people who are above
our olders in the gang, the highest on the hierarchy, from what I understood, this couple, they were massive on the
real-estate scene in the UK. They were not involved
themselves in the dirty work, but a lot of the money that
went going into their businesses came from the money that a
lot of the foot soldiers, the youngers like myself, would be making and passing up the food chain. It's scary to think that
when you go to a bank or you're speaking to a lawyer or you're walking into greater
London and you're talking to someone that's quite high
up in business, for example, they have interesting habits on the side, or hobbies on the side, because I've seen it with my own eyes. The way that street gangs make
their money here in London, there are things like kidnappings; there are hits, where
someone wants someone to be hurt or killed;
but the most common way, which I'd say is what you hear of or see most of day to
day, is by selling drugs. Gangs normally have things
called trap houses or bandos. Trap houses are places where
drugs will be sold from, where there could be stored weapons. Gang members will be living there or looking after the place, for example. And these are acquired
in a number of ways. So these could be places where squatters have been for a while. It could be someone else's
home that belongs to the gang. And these are safe spots for the gang. So if anything happens,
we'll get a call saying, "Right, meet us at the trap
house." We know where that is. The address is never texted over a phone. It's never spoken over a phone. It's always told verbally, so there's no traces to where it could be. And if they're in the
area the gang belongs to, the police initially will, immediately will make a connection. Gang wars can start over the smallest things or the biggest things. Smaller things could be they
were at a club or a rave, and from there someone gets stabbed, and then it's a whole,
we need to retaliate, we to send a message, we
need to show them who we are. So they rang up everyone, and then it's now not just
one person versus one person, it's actually a gang versus
gang, postcode versus postcode. And now we're talking
50 to 100 people plus. It got to a point where we
were having postcode wars, meaning it was my block, NW1, versus NW5. These gang wars started because people started to become greedy. People were looking for power. People were looking for,
just to be significant. And also people wanted to rise up. Postcode wars are also
named interstate wars. This is something that started
even in the '60s, '70s, which areas became smaller or bigger. And it's a way of protecting territory. Now there are things called
block wars, estate wars, which are, even within the same postcode, there is such rivalry. There is such demand for
who is more important. So it goes from area, postcode, now to blocks, which creates further division. Years ago, there was, it seemed to be more of a reason as to
why they're going to war, because something big happened. Even recently, I was mentoring about 10 young boys from a school, and one of them said to another one something offends him about his mom. And that spilled out from school. And because it was filmed
and put on social media, one of them actually
ended up getting stabbed. There was a video of around, to me, like, 60 people having a fight. I could see weapons. I
saw machetes coming out. What are they fighting over? Essentially it's nothing, really. Those fights are not happening over drugs, not happening over a threat
from someone outside. It's just two male egos that
can't have a conversation, and it has to result in violence, and then sometimes even death. Although guns are easy to source, knives are still the bigger problem. We hear more deaths happening from knives than gunshots for sure. Maybe because the laws around
knives aren't that regulated. Because they say if you carry a knife, you go to prison for four years. But then I hear people getting
three, four, five warnings. So people aren't really
taking the law seriously. And nowadays, when you hear
about someone being stabbed, it's a younger against a younger. Olders don't get involved
with stuff like that. And these youngers are
not going to be able to get a hold of a gun unless
they steal it from someone or steal it from the
trap house, for example. For any under-18-year-old to get a knife, it's as easy as going onto Amazon and clicking something
for next-day delivery, and it gets delivered. It's not regulated. I know even on Snapchat, there are accounts on Snapchat
every day where they say, "Hey, we have five machetes. We have five army knives
with knuckle dusters attached to it. Who wants this?" I've seen axes with chains. Why are they making these things? Why are they not asking for proof of ID? Some of them might say, "You
must be over 18 to buy this." That has never deterred anyone under 18 to say, "OK, ooh, I shouldn't do this." They don't know that by making that sale and then delivering it to that house, that young person goes
and kills someone here. They're part of that cycle. But they're so far attached from that. In the UK, there is a law
around carrying a knife, around the size, the blade itself being less than 3 inches.
It has to be foldable, and you shouldn't be carrying
it for the wrong reasons. I mean, I've been stopped
and searched before, and sometimes I did have a knife on me, but I did have a foldable knife and I wasn't in a state of anger. So the guy said to me, actually, if he caught me and I
was in a state of anger, then he would've arrested me. And that made me realize actually they don't have a correct
way of policing this. Because I know so many, well, I knew so many guys who would carry bigger blades on them,
ones that you can't fold. And they'd be walking with those on high streets, for example. I've never heard of someone going to prison for carrying a knife. So, I grew up in Marylebone, which essentially is a
very, very nice area. However, there is a division, because there's one side of
Marylebone where you have very nice mansions and
nice flats with nice cars. That's not where I lived.
I lived on the other side. I lived on the other side,
where it's council flats, it's block towers. Even though it's on our doorstep, we're brought up with a
mindset and a belief system that we're not good enough for that. It's easy for anyone to be
interested in joining a gang, for many reasons. For young people normally,
it's to do with money. The other main reason is that belonging. It's having a family, having
that brotherhood, a sisterhood. We don't go to private schools, right? We go to just public schools, and that's where it all starts. I didn't run to a gang and say, "Hey, I want to be in
your gang to make money." I tried to go down the proper route. You know, I borrowed some
clothes to go to interviews. I applied for 50 jobs when I left school, and no one said yes to me. If society's not allowing
me to make money in this way but there's a lifestyle
which could, where do I go? The first thing they do is befriend you, is they welcome you in. So they make you feel a part of a family. The second thing is to spoil you somehow. You know, if they know you need money, they give you some money. If they know you're
hungry, you get some food. Then they test you somehow. They may ask you to
hold something for them. They may ask you to be
somewhere at a certain time. And normally they've set something up to get you robbed on purpose. They set you up in some
way to see what you say, because that's them checking in on, "Oh, can we trust this person?" It's really bad the way
they make you trust them and actually love them as a family. But you're just a pawn in a bigger game. In a gang, it's almost
like putting together a fantasy football team. Different strengths.
Someone could be fast. Someone could be a good driver. Someone could be a good fighter. Someone could stab and not care about it. Someone could steal. So when
they recruit for a gang, I would say there are
qualities that they look for. The No. 1 thing they look for is loyalty, but they also look at, how
can they strengthen the gang? What can that person bring to the table? New gang members are recruited
on a geographical basis. So the local recruitment is, I think, the priority for a gang, because they need to have numbers high. They need to have a
certain amount of people on road doing certain things, a certain amount of people
moving, distributing, managing. So, in the UK, we have
something called county lines. And this is where a lot
of the inner-city gangs, there's no more territory,
everything's been divided up, so they're now thinking, "All
right, how can we expand?" So county lines are where
these gangs want to operate in smaller towns, smaller
cities, rural areas. And they normally use
young people for this. So you may have heard
of a term "going OT," which is going out of town, and they're facilitated by the olders. So the olders would have someone in place who may live in a smaller town. They may have someone who
has a farmhouse somewhere. Train tickets, everything is
paid for for the young person. They're given a budget, they give them money for
lunch and things like that. They'll tell them to dress
how they dress normally. They'll give them a backpack, say, "Look, don't open the
backpack. Here's the address. Go here, wait here, or call
this number," for example. The whole point of doing that
is so that police will say, "Well, it's a young person.
We don't have to search them." I think in some way, the
UK is influenced by the US, not just on the rap scene. I know the drill scene came out, but also there's always
a bit of competition. For example, the USA, the Bloods versus Crips, that
also came here in the UK. And that was a massive scene for a while. There was a period where
it just became colors. So there was just the bandana, which represented which color
or which gang you're from. That's really why we
started to see, you know, music videos become more grimy. We started to see more killings. We started to see more
weapons on the street. So, in the US, we have
gangs like VMF and GD, been going on for 30
years plus. Latin Kings. I feel that in the UK,
gangs are more divided. Here in the UK, you can
have an estate, a block. And even within that block, it's divided. You know, from block to
block, street to street. That's what I experienced, and nowadays I'm sure it's even worse. So the main difference for me
is the size of the operation. But also, it seems that
they have more stability and more structure in the way
that it creates longevity. I believe social media
plays a massive role in the rise of gang violence because of the exposure that they get. I've interviewed a young person in prison, and he said the reason why he
killed the people he's killed is because of songs that he'd listened to. He said he wanted to
recreate that in real life. And I'm focused on young people because they're the vulnerable ones. They're the ones who aren't
able to make a decision for themselves yet. I know for sure that there's going to be some collateral damage from these things. Because when you listen clearly, if you can understand what they're saying in these drill songs, it's scary. What's allowed to be sold
and listened to publicly and shared on radios for example, because young people will listen to that, and they want to replicate
that because they think, "Ah, OK, he is now my role model, my idol. For me to be deemed as someone successful, I need to do what he's doing." For children to avoid
being targeted for gangs, it comes down to discipline for me. It's really understanding what
you're getting yourself into. I think the way gangs
are policed nowadays, it's difficult, because it
made me feel so embarrassed, you know, to be stopped and
searched in front of my mom. And, you know, she cried at home, saying, "Why do they think my son
is this kind of person?" And I hated seeing her upset. But if I put their hat on, I think, "Right, well, if we
stop and search everyone that looks like the criteria stereotype, we could find another weapon
and take it off the streets." For me, that's the wrong
approach, because not everyone who looks a certain way
belongs in that stereotype. I think stop and search should
be reviewed as a policy, because if you find one young person and he's carrying a knife
that's under 3 inches long that is foldable, they'll take it away, slap on the wrist, "Have a good day." Next day, he'll go find
exactly the same knife from somewhere else, carry it again. Instead of creating or
deepening that hate, you should try and create a relationship by doing things like going into schools. I've always said that you
need to speak their language. If you want to police them,
sit down and talk to them. A brother of a friend of mine, a while back he was caught on the streets. He didn't have a lot of drugs
on him, but he had enough, and he was arrested and went
to prison for a short while. If someone said to him, "Hey, listen, we know what you're doing out here. How about we offer you an opportunity to earn money with us or
we'll find you a job?" And you've got to think of it like this: Prison is a business. Every single person that
gets put into prison, someone's getting paid. It's a good deterrent for some people, because some people might
take that as a lesson, saying, "Well, oh, I know a friend of mine was carrying something and got arrested. I shouldn't do it too." But for the most people, it's not enough. In prison, there's more going
on there than on the streets. This is what we don't
hear about on the news. There's people dying in prisons. The gangs are still doing
the same thing in prison. I believe wealth inequality definitely contributes towards
gang activity, gang violence. The way these gangs make their money, and also from personal experience, is through drugs, predominantly. If 90% of the money comes from drugs and you make it legalized,
one thing can happen, that there's going to be
too much demand for it, so either the gang will
start fighting even more because now they've got an
open market, for example, or it could destabilize them, because the second that companies hear, pharmaceutical companies
will start getting involved, and they're massive players. That will completely eliminate the gangs. So, will they have money to buy weapons? Will they have money to
even fund gang wars anymore? It probably wouldn't happen. For many young people who carry knives, one of the reasons, and
one of my initial reasons, was because we feel unsafe or we've heard about people being stabbed and we want to be able
to protect ourselves. I don't think there's a quick fix to trying to make a
young person feel safe. The way to solve the issue
and deter them from it isn't by fear, because that doesn't work. It's by reeducating them on the consequences of these things and actually giving people opportunity, showing people more love. These people that are involved in gangs, they did everything they did just because they wanted
to feel love from people. They didn't get love from home. They didn't get that affection at home, but when they did something,
the gang showed them a respect, and that's what drawed
them in even deeper. One thing I know that's
changed over the years and that would still help
other people feel safe in gang-led areas is the
presence of youth centers. And these were places where
you could have rival gangs come to the same building,
make music together, play pool together, play
basketball together. And it was a place of safety. When you have something
that you're passionate about and have something that you care about, it removes the amount of
time you spend with the gang. It removes the amount of time
you spend on the streets. Schools do have a big part
to play in gang culture. And it works both ways,
because I've seen how if you have a school that's in the middle of three areas that are
having a war, for example, then you have a big issue
because then you have, just like in prison, you have gang activity
happening at school. It will take a community
approach to remove or reduce gang violence and gang activity. But I think it has to be
a complete united front from all levels of society. If I have to look at London
gangs 10 years from now, I can see the problem becoming deeper. I can see a culture which is being even more embedded into society. I think London gang
culture will become almost like a standard for other
gangs in other countries. There are young people who don't look at the seriousness of this. They
will see it as, it's cool. They will see it as, it's a thing to be, just like I did when I was young. So, yeah. 10 years from now is a scary
place, especially as a parent. Trying to get out of a gang is one of the hardest things you can do. I didn't have a choice. It got to a point where I
had to go out of the ends. So leaving the area where I was from. I had to move to a different area. And this is because I'd seen people die. This is because I got attacked. I had been stabbed myself,
and I just knew in my mind there were two directions
for me, there was prison or there was being
stabbed or ending up dead. But it was in that moment of darkness where I realized I need
to make a bigger decision. I need to make a decision of what I'm going to do with my life. But it took me going and
speaking to the people who were my olders and
exactly telling them what I'm telling you right now on camera, is that I've had enough
and that, you know, my mental health at the
time wasn't in a good place. I wasn't able to speak to
any of them ever again. I wasn't welcomed. I was actually advised
to stay out of the area. Because I was actually able
to get out of the situation, I feel a responsibility to
be a voice to other people. Since leaving the gang, my No. 1 priority was to work on myself to
become a better person. So right now I'm a mentor and a coach. As a mentor, I work with young
people in schools, prisons, universities, helping them
understand their mindset, helping them to make better decisions. And as a peak-performance coach, I'm working with individuals
to do exactly the same thing but also to help them understand
what drives them as humans. There are definitely aspects of being around the gang activity that I do regret. But right now what I'm
doing with young people, adults, and people in
all levels of society, I wouldn't be able to
have those conversations if I didn't go through
what I've been through.
