INNOCENTS AT RISK AS DRUG GANGS GO TO WAR WITH GUNS

A spate of murders on crowded London streets has provoked fears of a
summer war between rival drug gangs.

The latest victim - 20-year-old Dean Roberts - was murdered by two men
with handguns in a busy suburban road. They did not try to disguise
their identities.

Witnesses were, as usual, too frightened to say anything to police,
who increased armed patrols last night amid fears of revenge attacks.

Eight people have been killed in as many weeks - all victims of what
detectives described as "gangland-style executions".

Appeals for calm by Scotland Yard brought scorn last night from many
community leaders, who fear that innocent bystanders may be caught in
the worsening feuds.One leader in South London said: "You don't have
as many shootings as this without people getting scared. Most
incidents go unreported unless there is a corpse, but the level of
violence has never been worse.

"We need to know how it is that with ever more stringent gun laws,
these gangs can get hold of weapons so easily."

Chief Superintendent Paul Green said: "London is a safe city and
people do not need to fear leaving their homes."

After a gunfight at the weekend outside a pub in Hoxton, East London,
police found nine cars with bullet holes. There were bloodstains in
many of them, but they had been abandoned by the time armed officers
arrived.

Two of the victims were later traced to a hospital near by. They had
driven themselves to the accident and emergency department but refused
to say how they had been wounded.Police could find no witnesses to
what one officer said "must have been a massive and very noisy gun
battle".

The murder of Mr Roberts in Harlesden was the fourth killing in that
area of northwest London in recent weeks. It came after a weekend of
violence and less than three weeks after Scotland Yard created a new
task force to tackle violent Jamaican "Yardie" drug gangs.

The reason for the killings was drugs, but not all the victims were
drug dealers, detectives said. There are thought to be a number of
rival gangs involved in the feuds on both sides of the Thames. One
senior officer said: "With every victim and every incident, you get
the seeds of revenge. There are so many guns in the hands of these
people that the opportunity for them to cause more violence is immense."

Security sources say there are more guns than ever in the hands of
low-level drug dealers who have little fear of using them. Among the
most recent attacks was that of a 23-year-old man shot in the head as
he sat at the wheel of his car, chatting to another motorist, in
Clapham, South London. Two masked men walked up to him and fired at
least ten times. They calmly walked away as women ran from their homes
to help. Police refuse to name the victim, who is under guard in hospital.

It is thought that among other drug war victims was a mother, Laverne
Forbes, who was murdered last month with her partner, Patrick Smith,
in front of her seven-year-old daughter. Police believe that the
28-year-old was shot simply because she had seen a drug gang at work
in Tottenham, North London.

A Yard spokesman said: "With so many incidents, detectives are trying
to establish any links between them and also incidents in recent weeks
outside London."

Police have linked two murders in South London last month. In the
first, Alexander Junior Ero, 30, was found dying on the stairs of a
tower block. He had been stabbed in the abdomen. Four days later
police found the body of Andrew Burke, 27, in the boot of a car that
had been set alight in Lewisham, southeast London.

There is evidence that many shootings go unreported. Police were
recently called to a South London club that had been peppered with
gunshots. There were bloodstains on the walls and floor and yet all of
those crowded inside insisted that nothing had happened.

The Yardie gangs often use restaurants, clubs and taxi firms as a
front for their drug dealing empires. Their armouries consist of
automatic weapons, including Uzi and Mach 10 sub-machineguns as well
as pistols.

A favoured weapon of late is the 9mm machine pistol known as the
"spray and pray", which can "squirt" 20 rounds a second.

Official figures disclose the escalating violence of the drug gangs.
Of the 160 murders in London in 1997, 41 of the victims were black and
18 were shot. All those shootings were thought to have been by Yardie
gangs. In the two years from 1996 to 1998, guns were fired 291 times
in London.

A senior officer involved in the investigations said that witnesses
were always hard to find.

"The problem is that even the victims of shootings don't want to say
anything. Often they try to sort out their own medical treatment
rather than go to hospitals, and are intent on seeking their own
revenge," he said..

"These are people who also routinely carry firearms and seem to have
little regard for how and when they use them. Once we get into this
seeming spiral of attacks, then the potential is there for revenge
attacks.

"The added problem is that few want to tell us what happened for fear
that they will be the next victim."

When Mark Burnett, a drug dealer, was shot dead in a nightclub for
accidentally standing on a Yardie's foot, about 2,000 people were
present. Hundreds gave police false names and addresses; 350 said that
they were in the lavatory when the shooting happened, and not one
witness emerged.