NOT IN YOUR BACK YARD?

In a spate of shootings, 'Yardie' gangsters who thrive on guns and drugs
have brought fear to London's streets - and their influence is spreading.
Andrew Alderson in London and Philip Sherwell in Kingston, Jamaica, investigate

THE traffic had slowed to a crawl at 8.40pm last Sunday as a motorcycle drew
up alongside a green Toyota Land Cruiser in Kennington Park Road, south-east
London. The pillion passenger pulled out a shotgun, pointed it at the six
occupants of the four-wheel-drive vehicle, who included Tim Westwood, the
Radio 1 hip-hop disc jockey, and opened fire.

As the motorcycle sped off towards Elephant and Castle, Westwood and a male
friend were left bloodied from gunshot wounds. It was the latest in a series
of brutal and daring attacks by suspected "Yardie" gangsters who, during the
past seven months, have brought unparalleled fear and mayhem to the streets
of London.

Thirteen people have been murdered and many others injured in a reign of
terror that now threatens the heart of middle England as much as the back
streets of Brixton and Harlesden.

Detectives investigating the shooting of Westwood, 41, are looking at the
possibility that he angered criminals on the fringes of the music scene. As
the DJ recovered at a secret address this weekend, serving and former police
officers from Scotland Yard provided an insight into the mentality of
Jamaican-born criminals who pursue wealth, power and, perhaps most important
of all, peer respect.

"This is no longer a case of black on black," said John Brennan, a former
detective inspector in the Metropolitan Police who spent more than a decade
investigating Yardie crime before retiring three years ago. "The
repercussions affect the whole community. It doesn't matter if you are from
the upper class or the lower. If your child is playing football in a park
and someone is doing a 'drive-by' [shooting], who knows who will be hit by a
stray bullet?"

The Yardies, who get their name from expatriate Jamaicans calling their home
island "the Yard", have a growing control of the lucrative drugs trade that
is affecting families all over the country, not just those close to the
inner-city crack dens. As they gain a stranglehold on the estimated pounds 1
billion a year crack "industry", a senior south London detective revealed
yesterday that new drug wars in south London have taken place because of the
growth in demand for cocaine and crack from white, middle-class
professionals who have moved into the area.

Billy, a gang 'lieutenant' in Kingston, has already been arrested for murder.

"The demand for cocaine has come from the young, white people who want it as
a recreational drug. The street price has increased from pounds 50 to pounds
65 [a gram] and, as a result, the gangs want a piece of the profits," he said.

Mr Brennan has seen the horrific injuries of Yardie victims at first hand.
He said: "These guys are the most ruthless people I have ever come across.
They resort to violence of a nature you could never believe. Some people get
murdered because they spill a drink over someone; some get murdered out of
revenge; some get murdered simply because a guy wants to get some
reputation, some status, by being violent."

Women are often the victims of the most extreme violence. While in the
Metropolitan Police, Mr Brennan investigated an attack on a woman street
trader by Yardies seeking her nephew, who had crossed them over a drugs'
deal. When they could not find him, they subjected Nellie "Gem" Allen to an
horrific 60-hour ordeal.

She was abducted, beaten with a gun butt and kicked in the head and body.
She was skewered in the thigh with a kitchen knife, left overnight without
food or drink and, the next day, sexually assaulted, forced to swallow a
bullet and beaten again. On the final day of her ordeal, as she slipped in
an out of consciousness, she was pinned to a sofa by a coat hanger driven
through the flesh of her upper arm. As she tried to escape from a
fourth-floor flat in her weakened state, she fell 50 feet to the ground and
suffered further appalling injuries.

In his book Crack of Doom, Jon Silverman, a BBC correspondent, displays
gruesome pictures of another Yardie victim who had a hot iron pressed
against numerous parts of her body. She was also doused in boiling water.

Mr Brennan, who is now chief operating officer for the corporate fraud
investigators Maxima Group, said: "The driving force for this group is to
'go foreign', make money and go back to Jamaica and build a house. The
recent spate of shootings in London is a mirror image of what has happened
in Kingston. These people are ruthless. We haven't got the intelligence on
them that we should have."

In the inner-city slums of Kingston, where the Yardie gangs have their
roots, the violence is on a different scale to the streets of London,
Birmingham, Manchester or Bristol. Two reprisal shooting sprees and a gang
feud left 21 dead in just one week this month.

The upsurge of violence, dramatic even by local standards, sent people
fleeing for safety to police stations. It prompted P J Patterson, the prime
minister, to launch Operation Trepid, deploying troops on the dirt-strewn
streets as he sought to rein in the tide of shootings that have already
claimed more than 500 lives this year.

Kingston acquired its reputation for murder and mayhem in the 1970s when
political rivals armed their supporters. The guns were never handed back and
now "turf war" is a way of life, particularly in the ghettos, where
unemployed, listless young men sit around and gangs known as posses fight
for territory, drugs and guns. They fight because one gang has committed a
robbery on another's patch. They fight to avenge insults: the heinous sin of
showing "disrespect". They fight, full stop.

The gangs are fiercely loyal groupings of young men from the same few
streets. Their leaders are known as "dons" and Chris, leader of the Walker
Pen gang, is a typical example. He is 29, festooned in chunky rings,
ear-studs and a medallion. His baby, Mona Lisa, sits on his knee as his men
gather around the drinks stand that he runs.

They include Billy, a diminutive 18-year-old whose callow features and
amiable air belie his reputation as one of the gang's best shots. He has
already been arrested for murder, but was released because, as is often the
case, police could find no witnesses. "I'm no bad boy," he insisted with a
grin before explaining why he would be forced to shoot at rival gangs. Chris
was also happy to demonstrate how he would fire his sub-machinegun, then
reach for the two pistols tucked in his waistband.

Until a recent truce, their main enemies used to be the neighbouring Grants
Pen gang run by Andrew Stevens, who happens to be Chris's first cousin.
Stevens's brother, Howard, was shot dead in London two years ago, he says,
while Stevens has twice been refused entry to Britain by immigration
officers at Heathrow. Despite his status as a don, he says there is no
reason to turn him away. Even when the Yardies are deported from Britain,
many simply get a new false passport and a return flight.

David Lidington, the Conservative home affairs spokesman, suggested last
week that Jamaican visitors to Britain should require visas. There has been
no official response in Kingston, although his comments were dismissed by
local politicians as discriminatory. The British High Commission was at
pains to emphasis that Mr Lidington's did not represent government policy.

Ruthlessness is not the Yardies' only export. Although the island is famous
for its ganja, of much greater concern to the British authorities is its
role as a staging post in the trafficking of cocaine and its
highly-addictive derivative, crack, from the drug cartels of South America.
Historic links mean that Britain is a significant target for the smugglers
who use everything from planes and ships to "human mules", mainly women who
are paid just a few hundred pounds to smuggle drug-filled condoms that they
swallow.

In his ninth-floor office at New Scotland Yard, Commander Andy Hayman, head
of the Metropolitan Police's drugs directorate, is reluctant to use the word
"Yardie" because he believes it gives the criminals greater kudos and
credibility. As head of Operation Trident, investigating gun-related crime
in London, Mr Hayman appears proud of recent successes by the unit.

Between 100 and 200 officers are investigating the London gun gangs at any
one time. According to other senior police officials, they have identified a
hard core of up to 100 suspected criminals in London who were either born in
Jamaica or whose families originated from the Caribbean island. However,
investigators in London and Jamaica say the term "Yardie" is now often
applied inaccurately to all black gangsters in London.

"Of the 13 murders this year, we have people charged in five cases and there
is not a week goes by without someone being arrested," said Mr Hayman.

The disorganised nature of the gangs, random motives and fear of reprisals
against witnesses can make crimes difficult to solve. One of the murders in
London is believed to have been provoked by someone accidentally treading on
his killer's toe in a nightclub. Moments later, he was shot dead.

Even Mr Hayman is shocked by the spate of shootings in the capital this
year. "What we are experiencing is a brazenness and arrogance in which
people are prepared to use a disproportionate amount of violence." However,
he had an upbeat message that the gun gangs would be defeated.

"The circumstances of these deaths are appalling. But in Harlesden, which
has been the scene of some of these crimes, the community is binding
together and some good is coming out of bad. When there is a crisis in a
community, it is amazing how the community spirit shines through. We hope
the people who are responsible for these attacks will start to feel very
isolated and very exposed."

But there's no sign that they feel frightened yet.