‘There’s no end to this because the police don’t care and we don’t care’: Inside London’s gang hotspot
London is on track for the worst year of teenage murders on record.
“The people who are in the gangs don’t seem to have any care for life in the way the general public do. They just don’t care,” says PC Jim Hare.
He is part of a Metropolitan Police unit specifically tasked with targeting gang violence in north London.
Twenty-seven teenagers have lost their lives so far in the capital in 2021. The youngest victim was a 14-year-old boy who was savagely killed with a sword. For now, at least, the grim record stands at 29 murders in 2008.
The main reason for this year’s deaths is gang warfare in some areas – hotspots. There are about 200 identified gangs in London. Each known gang and gang member is ranked by the Metropolitan Police by how violent they are.
This list, of course, is kept within the force, but I’m told that of the 20 most dangerous gangs in London, about seven are based in and around Tottenham. This means a handful of the most feared and violent gangs in the whole of the capital live on each other’s doorsteps.
This is the reason we chose to spend six months there, investigating why there were so many gang-related murders this year.
What we found was a tale of tension and division between two very different communities – the people who live there, and the Metropolitan Police.
‘I’m not a gang member, I’m a family member’
Moses showed me some of his tattoos. He pointed at one on his fist which reads ‘FMD’. “That means Farm Mandem, that’s my crew. Cause I’m from Broadwater Farm!”
Moses is very well known on ‘the Farm’. He has lived his whole life there and is equally respected and feared by the community.
I had spent several weeks trying to meet him. He pointed to another tattoo on his arm.
“This one says RIP Mark Duggan man,” he told me. Mark Duggan was shot and killed by a police officer during an operation in Tottenham 10 years ago.
“Mark was my good friend, bro. I’ve got so many memories of this guy. Like many memories, we went and met girls together. We grew up together.
“And then we’re portrayed as criminals, as gang members, as this, as that. But have any of those people that portray us as that ever spoke to us and asked us how we feel as a person?”
So what actually is a gang?
“A gang is a group of street-based young people who engage in a range of criminal activity and violence,” according to the Metropolitan Police’s website.
It continues: “They may also have any or all of the following features: identify with or lay claim over territory, have some form of identifying structure feature, or are in conflict with other, similar gangs.”
It’s the last part of that sentence that really rings true. The conflict between the sheer number of gangs goes a long way to explaining why there have been so many teenage murders in the capital.
In Tottenham and Haringey, for example, there are several high-profile gangs which all border each other.
Corey Newton was a promising young footballer who narrowly missed out on his dream of professional sport. He fell into what he called “street life” as a teenager.
The evidence of his lifestyle is plain to see. He has a large scar under his left eye.
“What’s that from?” I asked.
“Oh, that’s nothing,” he replied. “Don’t worry about it.” Corey wants to move on but I won’t let him.
I persisted: “Come on, what happened? Is that a stab wound?”
“Nah, man,” he said. “Someone hit me in the face with a huge padlock because they wanted my watch.”
He held up a gold Rolex. “But as you can see I still got it,” he told me with a proud grin.
Last year three of his best friends were stabbed to death in separate incidents. Now 26, he told me he’s trying to leave that world.
“Is it dangerous for you to walk about freely in Tottenham?” I asked.
“Let’s just put it like this,” he says, “I could be walking around here late at night, and if certain gang members are out to do stuff to each other on that particular day, and they happen to bump into me, they’re not particularly asking no questions because the younger generation today, they don’t give a f*** about who you are.
“If their bredren has died and they’re coming back to get revenge, it doesn’t matter who the f**k you are, you’re here, innit. That’s it. You’re gonna get it.”
Corey insisted he wanted to leave his past behind him.
As we said our goodbyes, he said: “Thank you for letting me tell my story. No one usually cares about us.”
‘A lot of things happen here but no one will ever call us about it, because calling the police is not the thing to do’
PC Jack Wilson told me this as we drove into the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham. “This place is known for tensions between the residents and the police,” he added.
There are many reasons for this tension.
The relationship between the Met and the community in Tottenham had been simmering for years, but it really broke down in the 1980s.
In 1985 Cynthia Jarrett, a 49-year-old black woman, died from heart failure after police entered her flat in the Broadwater Farm estate.
This led to a mass riot the following day in which PC Keith Blakelock, a riot officer working there, died after being stabbed 40 times by at least two knives and a machete.
Twenty-six years later, in 2011, a local man was shot and killed by a police officer during an operation. His name was Mark Duggan.
PC Keith Blakelock (L) and Mark Duggan
“The two things that everyone talks about around here are PC Keith Blakelock and Mark Duggan,” Inspector Niall O’Neill told me.
He runs the Met’s Violence Suppression Unit (VSU) in Haringey, and is known as “the Guv”. The unit was created in 2020 to specifically target violent and gang-related crime.
“Both incidents have affected policing here ever since. I know the public’s trust here isn’t what we’d like it to be, but we’re working really hard at it,” he added.
I spent several weeks with the unit during a troubled summer of violence. Their job is a difficult one. They are tasked with suppressing violence in an area known for it.
Not only that, but Insp O’Neill tasked his officers with connecting more with the community. Ease those tensions, bridge gaps, form relationships. But that is easier said than done.
While on patrol with the team I asked: “How do the wider community greet you guys when you go into their area?”
“Most of the time, terribly,” PC Hare answered.
“I personally think there’s a huge split in this area between police and the local community, which I don’t know if policing can do more to improve that. As a unit we really try to focus on it because that’s one of the keys to getting people to help us.
“A lot of people here don’t want to speak to us, a lot of the gang members don’t want to speak to us, or even the older community members don’t speak to us because maybe they feel the police are racist or we don’t do things correctly or we do it illegally.
“I’ll be honest, in my short time in the police, I don’t feel like I’ve met any racist police officers. The way we work is completely against that.”
I asked: “Do you enjoy your job?”
PC Dan Freeman replied: “Getting a knife out of someone’s pocket or out of a bag is why we do this. There’s no better feeling that. They’re only carrying that knife for one reason from my point of view.
“I’m not going to lie, right now, it’s the worst time to be a police officer, certainly in my career. The hostility towards police is the worst it ever has been.
“I’ve had my doubts along the way, of course, but we’re here to help people. That’s our job. We’re here to make people safe. And I love that idea.”
‘If you’re a white person then the Met are a police service. If you’re black, then they’re a police force’
Ken Hinds is a community activist in Tottenham, who was there for the 1985 and 2011 riots.
I asked him how the community would respond if police came to the area asking for information on a crime.
“Who the f**k are the police?” was his response.
“If you’re a white person then the Met are a police service. If you’re black, then they’re a police force”
The previous night, I was with the police as they drove into the Broadwater Farm estate for a routine patrol. “This is a completely different place at night. It has a very different atmosphere,” PC Freeman said as the team stepped out the van.
Seconds later, a group of young men saw the unit and run away. “We have runners!” PC Wilson shouted into his police radio.
The group of young men lost them, but two other members of the police unit ran around to the opposite side of the estate.
PC Freeman tackled one of the young men to the ground. “Hands behind your back now!”
He handcuffed him and told him he’ll be searched for weapons and drugs.
Seconds later, two young men gathered around and started watching. Then a third. Then a couple of older members came out to watch. I asked: “Why do they surround you guys?”
Insp O’Neill said: “They’re trying to intimidate us, they think they’re going to stop us doing our job.”
PC Hare continued: ‘You’ve got to be careful around here as the community will just come out from nowhere, asking what you’re doing.”
The community made their feelings clear. The police were not welcome there.
I met local resident, a woman called Paulette Campbell. Her son Marcel, 30, was murdered in a stabbing in 2018.
But Paulette was also at the Broadwater Farm riot in 1985. She told me: “So they locked up all of us black people in there, don’t you think that was gonna build a rage?
“And that rage was bubbling and bubbling and it just exploded.”
Paulette was one of the 359 people arrested and questioned over the murder.
She said: “I was stigmatised by the police when they kicked in my door, arrested me and took me into the station for three days and terrorised me for the death of a police officer I don’t know about, all because I lived on Broadwater Farm.”
I asked Paulette if she would ever forgive the police. “I don’t think so, no,” she replied.
During my six months in Tottenham, I asked everyone I came across for a solution. Here’s what some of them said.
Insp O’Neill: “I think it’s a long-term problem. It’s never going to be fixed overnight. I think we just always have to keep working at it. How do we make that better? It’s with the community’s help.”
Corey Newton: “There will be a solution but I’m not the person to tell you what that is. I might not even live to see the solution.”
Moses, the Broadwater Farm resident: “There’s no end to this because the police don’t care, and the community don’t.”
PC Hare: “There will be a solution to this problem, but it’s going to take for both sides to engage and sort out together.”
Teenage deaths in London in 2021
• Anas Mezenner (aged 17) died after being stabbed on 20 January 2021
• Romario Opia (aged 15) died after being stabbed on 26 January 2021
• Hani Solomon (aged 18) died after being stabbed on 12 February 2021
• Drekwon Patterson (aged 16) died after being stabbed on 19 February 2021
• Ahmed Beker (aged 19) died after being stabbed on 27 February 2021
• Tai Jordon O’Donnell (aged 19) died after being stabbed on 3 March 2021
• Mazaza Owusu-Mensah (aged 18) died after being stabbed on 6 March 2021
• Ezra Okobia (aged 14) died in a house fire (classed as homicide) on 6 March 2021
• Nikolay Vandev (aged 19) died after being stabbed on 8 March 2021
• Hussain Chaudhry (aged 18) died after being stabbed on 18 March 2021
• Levi Ernest-Morrison (aged 17) died after being stabbed on 11 April 2021
• Fares Maatou (aged 14) died after being stabbed on 23 April 2021
• Abubakkar ‘Junior’ Jah (aged 18) died after being shot on 26 April 2021
• Daniel Laskos (aged 16) died after being stabbed on 7 May 2021
• Taylor Cox (aged 19) died after being shot on 9 June 2021
• Denardo Brooks (aged 17) died after being stabbed on 11 June 2021
• Jalan Woods-Bell (aged 15) died after being stabbed on 11 June 2021
• Tashawn Watt (aged 19) died after being stabbed on 26 June 2021
• Camron Smith (aged 16) died after being stabbed on 1 July 2021
• Tamim Ian Habimana (aged 15) died after being stabbed on 5 July 2021
• Keane Flynn-Harling (aged 16) died after being stabbed on 6 July 2021
• Demari Roye (aged 16) died after being stabbed on 11 July 2021
• Stelios Averkiou (aged 16) died on 10 August after being stabbed on 1 August 2021
• Alex Ajanaku (aged 18) died after being shot on 21 August 2021
• Hazrat Wali (aged 18) died after being stabbed on 12 October 2021
• Kamran Khalid (aged 18) died after being stabbed on 28 October 2021
• On Thursday a 14-year-old boy, as yet unnamed, was stabbed to death in Croydon
One Direction star Liam Payne died of multiple traumatic injuries, a UK inquest into his death has heard.
The 31-year-old singer, who died in October after falling from the third-floor balcony of a hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was confirmed to have died of “polytrauma”, the inquest opening heard.
The hearing, which Buckinghamshire Coroner’s Court said was held on 17 December, was told it may take “some time” to establish how Payne died.
The inquest into Payne’s death in the UK has been adjourned until a pre-inquest review on 6 November, the coroner’s court said.
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Mourners gather for Payne’s funeral
Five people have been charged over Payne’s death at the Casa Sur Hotel on 16 October.
The hotel’s manager, a receptionist and a “representative” of Payne have been charged with negligent homicide (similar to manslaughter in UK law), Argentina’s National Criminal and Correctional Prosecutor’s Office previously said in a statement.
They are hotel manager Gilda Martin, receptionist Esteban Grassi and Payne’s “representative” Roger Nores.
Two others, hotel employee Ezequiel Pereyra and waiter Braian Paiz, have been charged with supplying cocaine.
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Family and friends attended Payne’s funeral on 20 November, including his girlfriend Kate Cassidy and former partner Cheryl, with whom he had a son, Bear.
His One Direction bandmates, Harry Styles, Louis Tomlinson, Niall Horan and Zayn Malik also attended the private ceremony.
Senior Coroner Crispin Butler said during the inquest hearing: “Whilst there are ongoing investigations in Argentina into the circumstances of Liam’s death, over which I have no legal jurisdiction, it is anticipated that procuring the relevant information to address particularly how Liam came by his death may take some time through the formal channel of the Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Office.”
It comes after the star’s final hours were recently detailed by a judge and the Argentinian Public Prosecutor’s Office, who said in a statement Payne had been “demanding” drugs and alcohol during his stay at the hotel.
On 16 October, Payne was in the hotel lobby and “unable to stand” due to the “consumption of various substances”, the court document said.
The receptionist and two others “dragged” the singer to his room.
The document also reiterated the hypothesis that Payne had “tried to leave the room through the balcony and thus fell”.
UK
Plan to sanction people smuggling gangs is a bold and novel departure – but can the government make it bite?
So can you stop people smugglers by lumbering them with sanctions? That is the government’s latest idea, and it is bold and innovative.
It will certainly get attention, even if that doesn’t mean it will work. But it is another effort by this government to differentiate itself from the leaders who came before.
In a nutshell, the idea is to cut the financing to what the Foreign Office refers to as “organised immigration networks” and is intended to deter “smugglers from profiting off the trafficking of innocent people”.
So far, so convincing. The rhetoric is good. The reality may be more difficult.
For one thing, and we await actual details of what’s going to be done, this raises an enormous question of how this can be accomplished.
A view of small boats and outboard motors used by people thought to be migrants to cross the Channel at a warehouse facility in Dover. Pic: PA
Some of the people smugglers bringing people across the Channel are based in Britain, but most aren’t. And as a general rule, they’re quite hard to track down.
I know that, because I’ve met some of them.
In Kurdistan, I drank tea with a cheerful man, Karwan, who had been responsible for smuggling a thousand people into Europe.
He had absolutely no fear of being caught, and no sense that he was even breaking the law.
The smuggling gang, who we met in October 2023, did not want to reveal their faces
Instead, Karwan considered that he was doing a duty to Kurds, allowing them to escape from the hardship of their nation to a more prosperous life in other countries, including Britain. Or, at least, that’s what he said.
How exactly Britain could impose sanctions on him is hard to imagine.
Nor is it hard to think of fear now creeping into the minds of the various smugglers I’ve met during years of reporting from the beaches of northern France.
These people are well aware that they’re breaking the law. You can hardly spend your time dodging French police and claim to be innocent.
Guns are becoming more commonplace in migrant camps. The spectre of sanctions won’t stop them.
Life jackets allegedly belonging to a gang of people smugglers which were seized by police in November
So the question is whether the British government can track down the people at the very top of these organisations and find a way of levying financial sanctions that bite.
Presumably, if these people were in Britain, they’d be arrested, with the prospect of their assets being frozen.
So imposing sanctions will probably involve working alongside European countries, coordinating action and sharing information. A process that has become more complicated since Brexit.
Sanctions have previously worked well when targeted towards high-profile people and organisations with a clear track record.
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The oligarchs who have propped up Vladimir Putin’s regime, for instance, or companies trying to procure armaments for hostile states. All have been targeted by a coalition of nations.
But this idea is novel – unilateral for a start, even if, one assumes, the French, Germans, Belgians and others have been warned in advance.
It’s also not quite clear how it will work – organised crime is famously flexible and if you successfully sanction one person, then someone else is likely to take over.
As for levying sanctions on the smuggling leaders in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Egypt, Albania and beyond – well, good luck.
An inflatable dinghy carrying migrants makes its way towards England in the English Channel. Pic: Reuters
What it does is to draw that distinction between the recent past, when the Rwanda plan was the main ambition, and Keir Starmer’s reliance on focusing on criminality and working together with partners.
And one other note. For years, the government has talked about people crossing the Channel as illegal migrants, even though there is a dispute between UK and international law about whether these people are actually breaking the law.
Now the Foreign Office is using the term “irregular migration”. Is this a change of tone, or just a stylistic whim? Just as with the sanctions, we will wait and see.
A senior Conservative has called for a retrial for Lucy Letby, the nurse jailed for murdering seven babies and attempting to murder seven others.
Former minister Sir David Davis has said he believes a retrial will “clear” her, as her conviction was “built on a poor understanding of probabilities” and lacked “hard evidence”.
He told MPs on Wednesday “there is case in justice” for a retrial, but admitted there was a problem.
David Davis
Much of the expert analysis of the case notes he was referring to, was available at the time but not presented to the jury, he said.
That meant the Court of Appeal can dismiss it, “basically saying the defence should have presented it at the initial trial”.
In effect, he said, the court can say: “‘If your defence team weren’t good enough to present this evidence, hard luck you stay banged up for life’.”
Such an outcome “may be judicially convenient, but it’s not justice,” he said.
He said earlier: “There was no hard evidence against Letby, nobody saw her do anything untoward. The doctor’s gut feeling was based on a coincidence – she was on shift for a number of deaths, and this is important, although far from all of them, far from all of them.
“It was built on a poor understanding of probabilities, which could translate later into an influential but spectacularly flawed piece of evidence.”
Sir David said Letby’s case “horrified the nation” and that it “seemed clear a nurse had turned into a serial killer”.
“Now I initially accepted the tabloid characterisation of Letby as an evil monster, but then I was approached by many experts, leading statisticians, neonatal specialists, forensic scientists, legal experts and those who had served at Chester Hospital who were afraid to come forward,” he added.
These experts convinced Sir David that “false analyses and diagnoses” had been used to “persuade a lay jury” to find Letby guilty.
Responding to Sir David, Justice Minister Alex Davies-Jones said it is “an important principle of the rule of law that the Government does not interfere with judicial decisions”.
She added: “It is not appropriate for me or the government to comment on judicial processes nor the reliability of convictions or evidence.”
Ms Davies-Jones later told the Commons that Letby could apply to the Criminal Cases Review Commission if she believed she had been wrongly convicted.
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Letby, from Hereford, is serving 15 whole-life orders after she was convicted at Manchester Crown Court of murdering seven infants and attempting to murder seven others, with two attempts on one of her victims, between June 2015 and June 2016.
Letby, who was in her mid-20s and working at the Countess of Chester Hospital at the time of the murders, is now the UK’s most prolific child killer of modern times.
The 33-year-old killed her victims by injecting the infants with insulin or air or force-feeding them with milk.
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