YARDIE GUNMEN 'ALL GOLD CHAINS AND NO BRAINS'

THEIR role models die rich and violently, they demand respect by carrying
guns and they aspire to Moschino and Mercedes. With a "life is short but
sweet" attitude, they are the latest generation of Yardie-style gangsters
now spreading fear through communities in London.

The current crime wave in Brixton, South London, and Harlesden, in the
capital's northwest, is being blamed largely on turf wars involving
British-born criminals, known as "Home Boys". Such is the terror they
inspire that people in Brixton are today holding a "stop the killings" rally.

So far their violence - over who controls a lucrative crack cocaine market
worth an estimated pounds 1 billion a year in Britain - has claimed at least
13 lives this year. The brutality spreads beyond the gangs to bystanders:
showing disrespect - "dis" in street slang - can prove terminal. Seemingly
petty disputes escalate into shootings. One clubgoer was killed for
allegedly stepping on another's foot.

A series of sub-plots involving the music scene and a struggle by several
disparate groups to establish territory and status is hampering police
investigations. The Radio 1 rap disc jockey Tim Westwood, shot on Sunday in
South London, is believed to have become embroiled in one power struggle.

Despite police distaste for the term Yardie - derived from the Jamaican
backyards and correctly applied only to gangsters born on the island - it
remains a handy label for the new wave of criminal. Aged mainly between 18
and 25, they have been raised on the music of Biggie Smalls and Tupac
Shakur, American rappers who were shot dead in their mid-twenties.

Their lyrics preach hatred of authority, the need to gain respect and the
love of the gun. "Your [sic] nobody until somebody kills you," Smalls rapped
prophetically. Among young gang members they, and other rappers, including
DMC and Ruff Ryders, are the true icons, not sports stars.

"The rappers articulate having no hope," said Patrick Lewis, who runs a
northwest London youth project. "The mainstream is not what they are about,
they are into an underground culture." Part of that culture is the gun,
glamourised by US gangster films. "Eleven and 12-year-olds are growing up
perceiving that the way to settle conflict is to use the handgun," said Mr
Lewis.

One 16-year-old Brixton girl said it was commonplace for her peers to carry
guns. "I was scared the first time I was shown one but now I am used to it.
It is partly bravado, partly because they need them for their protection."

The weapons are readily available and the user does not need to be a skilled
shot to kill. Semi-automatic and automatic "street sweeper" or "spray and
pray" guns are much more likely to kill than single-shot guns of the past.

Detectives have identified at least three gangs. The Kick Off Head Crew and
the Much Loved Crew, active in North London, and the Black Rose Criminal
Posse, south of the river. There are also teenage gangs on the fringes of
crime with names such as The Younger Younger 28s and the Lilford Road Soldiers.

Brixton is undergoing gentrification. Its wine bars and cafE9s are shunned
by gang members, who congregate on sprawling estates, around record shops,
music clubs and "pay parties" where condition of entry involves leaving your
gun at the door. They wear Moschino and Dolce and Gabbana. A pair of "Nike
120s" are the favoured shoe - 120 is not a brand name but the price. No
trainer costing less will do.

They aspire to mopeds, at first, then BMWs and Mercedes. The ultimate is a
four-wheel drive, such as a Toyota Landcruiser. On their wrists are
expensive watches, hence the rise in "Rolex robberies".

Keeping track of gang members can be difficult, not least because they move
from place to place. Lee Jasper, a South London community leader, blamed the
violence on "petty scores being settled" by young men who were "all gold
chains and no brains".