BRITISH CRIME LORDS RULE UKP40 BILLION UNDERWORLD

A UKP40 billion underworld economy is dominated by homegrown criminals,
with at least 27 "Mr Bigs" running their empires from inside British
jails, The Times has learnt.

An intelligence map drawn up by the leading police expert on organised
crime identifies more than 1,000 active criminal networks and shows
that gangland is still controlled by British families, despite the
influx of crime syndicates from Eastern Europe and South-East Asia
over the past decade.

In a separate operation, investigators have identified 27 crime bosses
running networks from prison cells. Although they are all in jail,
Terry Adams, Kenneth Noye, Brian Brendon Wright, Brian Gunn and Curtis
Warren are being monitored closely.

Deputy Chief Constable Jon Murphy, of the Association of Chief Police
Officers (Acpo), told The Times that crime specialists work together
to make money through drug deals, robberies and smuggling.

"British gangs are quite unlike the Italian Mafia model or the Turkish
groups," he said. "There are no set ranks, rules and structures. They
are more fluid, flexible and opportunist."

The intelligence picture was built up by Acpo working with the 43
police forces in England and Wales and other bodies. More than 15,000
individuals are said to have been identified as involved in organised
crime.London has more than 170 gangs. Some have sophisticated
hierarchies; others are little more than street-level groups. In
Liverpool, criminal networks are deeply embedded and run by a number
of families whose tentacles spread well beyond the city. Merseyside
criminals control the drug trade on the South Coast. Manchester has
established gangs such as the Longsight Crew and the Gooch Close Gang,
while Birmingham has been dealing for years with the rivalry between
the Johnson Crew and the Burger Bar Boys. Bradford is a centre for
money laundering and a major distribution point for heroin by
British-Pakistani gangs. Serious crime in Nottingham has been
dominated by the Gunn family. Glasgow is the hub for the distribution
of firearms in Scotland and the starting point for much of the heroin
trade, which spreads as far north as Shetland.

Many foreign gangs active in Britain are based overseas and exploit
the 11,000-mile coastline and security weaknesses at sea ports to
smuggle drugs, guns and counterfeit goods into the country. Much of
the media coverage of gangs has concentrated on turf wars and feuds,
but serious criminal activity is focused on making money.

Career criminals prefer to work together when they have common
interests. They will form loose coalitions, sharing their specialist
skills in pursuit of the highest profit with the least risk.

Mr Murphy said that organised crime was driven by profit. "Some 60 per
cent of criminal groups are involved in drug trafficking, but many are
multi-commodity organisations," he said. "If they can traffic drugs
they can also smuggle counterfeit goods.

"When the Government took a different approach to cannabis there was a
big shift by organised criminals into cannabis. The smuggling routes
and methods were the same, the profits were high but the penalties
were less." The declassification of cannabis led to a boom in cannabis
farms, controlled largely by Vietnamese syndicates and producing
high-strength skunk.

The Acpo intelligence map is being used by all police forces and the
Serious Organised Crime Agency to target the most dangerous and
prolific gangs.

Most criminal networks specialise in one or two areas, but some
diversify and it is understood that one is involved in 14 types of
activity.

Mr Murphy said: "We have an identified number of organised crime
groups. We believe we know who is doing what and how they are doing
it."

He said that it was the first time that British agencies had looked at
criminal groups rather than concentrating on individuals or types of
criminality. "We're now looking at the groups and the networks of
groups. They often form loose, amorphous coalitions - coming together
for a particular venture, perhaps one group needs a skill which
another specialises in."

A recent investigation in London uncovered an arms deal in which a
Lithuanian gang had been trading handguns in return for an
introduction to Colombian cocaine contacts. Another inquiry broke up a
sex trafficking ring run jointly by Lithuanian, Albanian and Chinese
criminals.

Mr Murphy said: "There are Mr Bigs, but the person you start out
thinking of as the Mr Big is quite often not. These are people who are
flying below the radar and you may not realise who they are for a long
time."

The Acpo team is concerned at the ease with which inmates can obtain
mobile phones. "Significant criminal activity is being driven from
within prisons," said Mr Murphy.

All criminal groups are prepared to resort to violence when necessary
to commit robberies, enforce protection rackets or secure drug deals.
Firearms, which are seen as a tool and a statement of intent, are a
priority. Some networks, notably newly arrived groups from Lithuania,
have been established to service that demand.

The map is being updated and refined continually to improve the
picture and keep track of the rise, fall and varying activities of
different groups.

A scoring system is used to identify which groups should be targeted
immediately and which can be subjected to intelligence gathering.

Mr Murphy said: "This has given us a greater understanding of the
make-up of the criminal world. We know it's not perfect yet. There is
a difference, for example, between what a shire force thinks is
serious and organised crime and what a city force thinks.

"What we're talking about here is a continuum of harm from a poppy
field in Kandahar to a burglary on an estate or somebody getting shot
here. The two things are linked and we need a consistent policing response."