LOCKED IN A GHETTO MENTALITY

American Ghetto Culture With Its Drugs, Street Gangs, Violence And Firearms
Is Now Part Of Life In Many Inner-City Areas. Crime Correspondent Steven
Shukor Talked To A Group Of Nottingham Teenagers About How It Is Shaping
Their Lives

Billows of grey marijuana smoke filled the red Vauxhall Astra, leaving the
three teenagers sitting inside feeling its full effect.

They were oblivious when another vehicle pulled alongside them, and a man
in a balaclava wound down his window and pointed a gun.

He hurled abuse before firing a shot into the side of the Astra. The
youngsters flung open the doors, stumbling and scrambling on to the
pavement for safety, panic gripping them.

This is the grim reality of life for Nottingham's small time drug dealers -
known by their slang label "shottas" and who peddle anything from cannabis
to crack cocaine.

The shotta aspires to the riches that he believes dealing in drugs will
provide - jewellery, fast cars, beautiful women. On the street, it is
called the 'bling, bling'. Instead, those who chase it live a cliff-edge
existence, perpetually afraid of who might be lying in wait with violence
in mind.

These young men are imprisoned in a ghetto mentality. They are infected by
drugs, poverty, broken families, violence, peer pressure, prejudice,
disillusion, low-self-esteem, materialistic desire and gangsta rap music.

The teenagers involved in the Astra incident are reluctant to talk about
it. One of them, Tre (not his real name), claims the shooting was a case of
mistaken identity. "They took me for someone else," he argues.

But the word on the streets of Hyson Green, where the incident happened,
tells a different story.

Those who have heard about it say the shot was a warning from one rival
gang to another.

It's a graphic example of the precarious existence of drug dealers,
destined to live a life that is brutish and possibly short.

"A shotta is just like a paperboy making deliveries," said a 15-year-old
who we shall call Ras. "To be a shotta you need a mobile phone, transport
and then you go poaching, which is taking other people's customers.

"You can get up to four runners working from one phone. One shotta gets the
calls and tells the runner where to make the delivery."

They call their customers - often homeless people - "fiends" or "cats".

"If you're going to enter the game you have got to be thorough," warned
Ras. "If there are groups poaching customers, you are bound to get a turf war."

He said dealers operated in clicks (another word for gangs). The penalty
for those who didn't was likely to be "capped in the head" - literally
shot, he said. Pathetically, shottas are the people who end up being
arrested or shot in drug feuds. They are being manipulated by the drug
barons with false promises of wealth.

They are unwittingly doing his dirty work while he keeps his hands clean,
rarely coming into contact with the merchandise.

Ras said shottas' transportation could mean a bicycle, a car, usually hired
under a false name, or a "pool car" - one bought for next to nothing on the
black market.

The teenagers said "bora" guns, the name used for a modified air-pistol
which has been bored to fire real bullets, were common currency among
shottas, not only for status but to protect their "business interests".

"You can buy a bora for UKP10," insisted Ras.

Tre added: "Everyone is shotting 'cos it's fashion. They think 'cos they're
dealing they're up there with other people. They think they're the Daddy.
If people know you're dealing, they look at you differently.

"But you have got to know who you can trust. You have to watch out for the
snakes - they are the ones grassing us up to the Feds [the police]."

"They are player-haters. They act like they're down with you but actually
they are conspiring against you behind your back.

"Everyone on the streets uses tag names. It's for security so the Feds or
the snakes don't know who you are," said Nova, who has a reputation for
being a hit with the women.

"He's evil with the girls," Ras joked. "He's got the clothes, the jewellery
and the trainers but he's just cold with the women."

The language they use to describe the people and life in their
neighbourhood and their own perception of their experiences is coloured by
youthful bravado and the ghetto life portrayed in American gangsta rap
music and films such as Menace to Society.

These youngsters have grown up in a place where, in their estimation, the
only people to have "made it" are the drug dealers, those driving around in
fancy cars, with the "fittest" girls, wearing flash jewellery and designer
clothes.

"A top shotta will be driving around, earning UKP1,400 a week but he
doesn't touch the stuff. Others are selling it for him," says 16-year-old
Sticky.

Whether or not it is an illusion, this mirage of the successful drug dealer
is dragging young people into the drugs trade with hopes of rich and easy
pickings. They live in a sub-culture with its own codes, social
classifications and survival techniques, where traditional values are
turned on their head, as though in the "ghetto" it is just better to be bad.

"Everyone wants to live like they do in the American ghetto," said
17-year-old Nova, sporting a bandana around his head.

They talk about gang life and living in a ghetto but Nottingham's inner
city bares little resemblance to the mean streets of Watts or Harlem.

"There are gangs based on where you live, whether you come from Radford,
Basford, St Ann's or The Meadows," said Ras.

The "posses" are loose associations of young people "repping", or
representing their neighbourhood.

"Someone from St Ann's will be repping Stannz posse. If you're from The
Meadows, you be repping the Waterfront. You're a member whether you like it
or not," added Ras.

The hostility among these groups is real. A St Ann's youth wanders into The
Meadows at his own risk of being spotted or "clocked" by a rival gang.

"If you are clocked in a neighbourhood where you don't belong then you're
gonna get capped," said Ras. "Everyone knows everyone in your hood, so new
faces stick out. Outsiders aren't welcome.

"St Ann's and Radford are all right to a certain extent."

"But one time we were down there and they were looking at us like we were
from The Meadows.

"The girls we were talking to said that if we were from The Meadows, they
couldn't talk to us."

Some girls, they said, were a source of conflict between the different areas.

"We call these kinds of girls; hoodrats - easy women, the lowest of the low.

"They're rummaging everywhere for men who can buy them things. They go from
hood to hood and man to man, creating conflicts."

On the other side of the scale are the so-called gooses or chicken-heads -
well-dressed women the men describe as "gold-diggers".

"They are looking for guys with the bling bling. If you don't have a car,
then you've got no chance of pulling one of these. That's why guys want the
cash and the car," said Nova.

But outward signs of wealth, the jewellery, the "one-tens" (slang for a
pair of trainers), which give self-respect and status, carry their own risks.

"If you got a pair of one-tens then you're at risk of being jacked," said Ras.

"If you have got new trainers or a gold chain, people will say, 'hey, how
come he's got this' and think 'this man's doing better than me'. And that's
how people get jacked.

"In the ghetto you've always got to watch your back. Beefing's always going
on." Yet for all its faults, the ghetto, as they call it, is their home. It
is the place where they grew up. They know every nook and cranny. It is a
place where they know who to run to for help, a place where they know where
to hide, a place where they know the rules and a place where they feel they
can live life on their own terms.

Ras said: "I would not want to leave this place. You can't leave it. If I
ever got into heat I know who to go to for help. It's about security. It's
not a life you want to live, you're born into it, so you have to protect
yourself."