The Truth About Gangs In London

[00:00:00][music] >> No no politics.

[00:00:06]>> The organized crime scene in Britain is it it's a bit like a criminal UN. You know, Britain's like the biggest consumer, you know, per capita um of cocaine uh anywhere in the world, you know, like Brits Brits love it. Kids with like AK-47s. So, you get these kids coming who are over to the UK they've been culturalized in that way.

[00:00:32]Certain ethnic gangs like Turkish and Albanian gangs outsourcing um uh their dirty work to predominantly black street gang operators. Boom, like that. Window goes, they're in, door open, bang, and they're off. But it's like they say like, you know, man don't need no front, you know, I'm just going out there and committing bare crime.

[00:00:58]>> So, boom, uh here we go again for one of my favorite journalists, uh favorite UK crime journalist, David Matthews. Uh we talked before and it's great to talk again. How how are you doing David?

[00:01:11]>> Yeah, I'm good. Yeah, recovering from uh the disappointment of England being um knocked out of the the World Cup.

[00:01:19]Humiliated out of the World Cup.

[00:01:22]But um >> My cap is there.

[00:01:24]>> said about that the better.

[00:01:26]>> Yeah, my cap is there and it's about to go to dustbin, I think. And I don't [laughter] know. Three lions, three chihuahuas on a shirt. The uh Uh what what a painful way to go to uh I mean like uh there's a here I mean Mexico City a lot of Argentine Argentines around. I could hear them celebrating yesterday driving past in cars and waving flags. I I can't look any Argentines in the eye right now after that performance.

[00:01:51]>> Yeah, yeah, I'd say yeah. I mean it's um It Fun- Funnily enough and we were talking earlier, of course, about England's game with Mexico.

[00:02:02]And one of the things that I think a lot of people over here in that usual you know, dismissive, sort of semi-ironic, condescending British way, they're like, "Oh, yeah, England-Mexico.

[00:02:16]I mean, it's going to be like, you know, yay-o, kidnappings, you know, yadda yadda yadda." But, of course, as you were saying, um English fans were met with nothing but, you know, hospitality in in Mexico, uh which is I would Yeah, I wouldn't say it's ironic, but I haven't been to Mexico myself. I mean, I had a great time there, and of course, um places get a reputation, don't they?

[00:02:44]>> Mhm.

[00:02:44]>> Based on a lot of fiction. Of course, there's a lot of fact to these things, but I'm I'm kind of curious about that exchange of of perception and mythology.

[00:02:56]Mexico one way. I mean, how do Mexicans see the Brits?

[00:03:02]>> Yeah, well, look, Mexico is this amazing country that's full of paradoxes as well. So, you know, when someone reports on on the organized crime and the violence, and some people can say, "Well, you're giving it a bad name by reporting on that." That stuff is true, um completely. At the same time, it's this amazing country as well. Uh what was incredible, uh you know, I've been here here for 25 years. People would ask me, "Who are you going to support? You going to support Mexico or England?" And I'm an England supporter. And, you know, as you know, as a supporter of a football team, you don't change team as easy as you establish it. You know, suddenly one day you're you're three lines, you know, "Football's coming home, three lines on a shirt." And the next minute, you know, I'm uh you know, "Chilito lindo in Mexico." And I But, I will sympathize uh with Mexico. And And there was, you know, the euphoria in Mexico around the World Cup was great. I mean, I went to the Angel after the victory against Ecuador with a million people there. Three people crushed to death, but a million people out there.

[00:04:04]Absolutely insane scenes.

[00:04:06]And and I was wondering what the reaction would be, you know, when you get this this the hope and you're hyped and you're hyped and you're hyped. Uh, and then, you know, seeing England fans with that react it would be an angry reaction.

[00:04:17]And I was amazed that there wasn't and and how I I did go to a pub of of proper England supporters who came over, people who couldn't get tickets for the game, but were were, you know, in there properly with the football's coming home again. We'll tell you to go, you know.

[00:04:33]>> [laughter] >> I know I know the songs.

[00:04:35]I and on the streets afterwards just the amazing, I mean, one of my most amazing moments of being in Mexico after 25 years when they came out, people came out and congratulating and and and and hugging us and just saying how great and we just on the streets partying. It was actually amazing scenes.

[00:04:52]Um, so yeah, yeah, great. The only The only aggravation, slight tension I had was was, fun enough, with some with some Mexican Americans who'd come down for the game. People from from San Diego of Mexican descent who came down and were a bit aggressive, you know, seeing me in an England shirt.

[00:05:10]But like uh, and I can I can I can understand the aggression when you know, after we lost to Argentina, I I I couldn't face and look at Argentines, you know.

[00:05:18]>> [laughter] >> So did you want to create a one-man football hooligan parade?

[00:05:25]>> [laughter] >> And then like in England people are you know, they're not So, you know, it's it's amazing. I mean, like it's you know, Mexico's full of full of issues um, and and the issue in terms of it being a wonderful country and a country that you can go and enjoy at the same time having this amazing issue of violence is something, you know, just just people can tell, know, get two thoughts in their head at the same time.

[00:05:49]Um, Um and you know, it's not you don't want to either hide the violence cuz it's a real part of life here and and really horrible things happen to people all the time and can happen.

[00:05:59]And at the same time say it's not everything. So yeah, it's it's part of it. But anyway, right now it's talking about London, about the UK.

[00:06:08]Um you know, so I love I love reading your stories in Unheard Among Places.

[00:06:13]You got a whole series of books, fascinating journeys, career going through everything from from boxing where you don't only write about it but get involved and start boxing to greyhound racing to to to gangs, to prisons and so I want to do this this episode mainly focusing on on the on the London gang scene, the UK gang scene because although people have seen news about this, I don't think there's many journalists um unlike yourself have really got in there and and and try to understand what what really is the London gang scene.

[00:06:45]What is the UK gang scene?

[00:06:47]Mhm. And I see a lot of things like um Top Boy, which is a good series, but like it's kind of the writing I think and the the it's not that informed about really the structure of gangs and stuff.

[00:07:02]And they tend [clears throat] to copy Sorry if you you were you were consultant on on the on Top Boy or anything.

[00:07:07]>> No, no, no.

[00:07:10]>> In case you were, all right, you know.

[00:07:12]Cuz I feel like the British writers tend to copy American They They copy The Wire. The Wire is good because they got David Simon who went out there and who who who really started it and then they So anyway, so you you really started this. So so let's get to some of the basics here and and it gets to the whole issues of knife crime, of you know, murder in London, of of how violent is London.

[00:07:34]Is London as some people say now kind of no-go zone? I don't think it is, but it again it's also not true that there's not a problem with with gangs and stabbings and all these things. Again, these kind of paradoxes. So, what's the basic So, what's the basic stuff of the gang scene in London, the gangs themselves?

[00:07:52]Kind of who are the players? What kind of gangs are they in London today? And how's that evolved um since you know you began working as a a journalist in London back in the '90s when when you began?

[00:08:05]>> Yeah.

[00:08:05]>> Um >> Yeah.

[00:08:06]>> So, how things have evolved and and what's the what's the stuff >> I I'd say that it's it follows very much um a sort of franchise model. You know, there isn't the degree uh certainly anymore of major firms that control territory in the way that you had, you know, going back in the '50s and '60s with the Kray twins.

[00:08:31]>> [snorts] >> You know, into the sort of '70s and '80s with the you know, the Arifs from Bermondsey, South London. And then, you know, you get into the A-team, the Adamses. Again, you know, the '80s, '90s.

[00:08:46]Uh um what have you.

[00:08:48]What the authorities have managed to do quite successfully, and not least because of their um you know, use of surveillance, use of informants, um and and the landscape of Britain, but you know, it it being a relatively small place, and thus relatively easy to police uh um in many ways. You know, they managed to like crack down on a lot of the major players. I mean, of course, you still got people like um uh you know, you still got sort of outfits coming out of uh parts of Ireland, for instance, that working with um UK organized uh crime groups.

[00:09:37]Um but they're quite, yeah, you know, they're quite amorphous.

[00:09:41]Now, I think also what you've had as well is because of the opening up of Europe over the, you know, the past couple of decades, lot of mobility around Europe. So you've had, you know, Albanian gangs coming into the UK and establishing themselves, Turkish gangs. It's really become like a sort of, I guess you could say that the the organized crime scene in Britain is a it's a bit like a criminal UN, you know, it's like everyone's got a seat at the table and controls their little patch, if you like.

[00:10:20]But there are common threads within that. I mean, one of the common threads I think that we've seen over the years is an increasing use of uh, county lines and very young males typically being uh, um, effectively groomed, almost like press-ganged into you know, into gangs.

[00:10:43]Um, being then, uh, you know, being sent off into the regions to then, like I say, set up these kind of franchised outposts in seaside towns, in rural towns, you know, in small cities and what and whatnot. So you've got this kind of like, you know, many-headed uh, multi-faceted scene that's spread around the country now. And largely driven by the British penchant for cocaine. I mean, I think second to the the US, you know, Britain's like the biggest consumer, you know, per capita, um, of cocaine anywhere in the world, you know, like Brits Brits love it. Part of that is because Brits love drinking.

[00:11:33]>> Mhm.

[00:11:34]>> Um drinking and cocaine tend to go hand in hand and it's become uh um again in certainly since the '90s um really pervasive in the sense that you can go to football matches and they'll be, you know, fellas coming out of like the toilets like, "Yeah, great game. Yeah, oh yeah."

[00:11:55]>> [laughter] >> "I can't wait for the second half, mate."

[00:11:58]>> Yeah.

[00:11:59]>> Yeah.

[00:11:59]And that There's a lot of that going on.

[00:12:01]It's like, "It's November. Have you got hay fever or anything?"

[00:12:04]>> [laughter] >> How's that happen? But yeah, >> The The England team The England team could have done with a few lines.

[00:12:12]>> [laughter] >> Yeah, three three lines on a shirt. They could They could have done with a few lines in that last half hour to get him going instead of like, you know, to wake him up against [laughter] to wake him up against Argentina. The uh Well, obviously Maradona to to to talk about cocaine football players. Maradona himself was, you know, was like you know, never that. So, yeah, so that's that's an interesting one. So, yeah, I mean, yeah, the huge um cocaine use.

[00:12:36]A a lot of it I think very heavily cut cocaine. I mean, a lot of what they sell, you know, they you know, people putting all kinds of stuff uh cut, you know. But yeah, uh big >> And ex- extremely so. Sorry, I I actually as as you mentioned that, the the cutting of it and like I said, because the authorities have been able to you know, successfully sort of like break down a lot of importation. I mean, we've had some like, you know, like major drug busts in recent times and, you know, they're coming in at several sort of you know, you know, tons and tons of it, but they're it's being intercepted by, you know, the navy, uh by the uh serious crime agency, you know, even kind of like counter-terrorism is getting involved because of the links, of course, between drug trafficking and funding terrorist sort of activity.

[00:13:37]>> [snorts] >> Um, what you've got is you've got, you know, a lot of demand for a product, a lot of product being taken out of the scene, and then a lot of competition to kind of, you know, maximize the product that is there. So, there's a lot of cutting of it going on. A lot of that That generates, of course, a lot of violence as it trickles down on onto the streets.

[00:14:04]And, you know, street-level dealers are competing with each other for what is, you know, a highly competitive market out there. And that's where I think we see that, you know, we tend to see a lot of the violence in terms of gang and drug-related crime.

[00:14:21]At the lower end of it, as opposed to, you know, major hits on serious, you know, organized crime figures. That I I think there's less and less of that now compared with back in the day where, like I said, where you had these kind of very visible, uh, well-known, uh, criminal outfits that, uh, uh, would be, um, taking people out willy-nilly.

[00:14:49]Um, in order to >> well, you're referring We we don't know who's more, uh, not know the UK too well. We're going back to the '60s, the Kray's. These were these, uh, kind of flamboyant, uh, Cockney gangsters who became celebrities. Um, and that was kind of old-school British gangsters we think about, which are now kind of a relic of the past.

[00:15:13]>> Yeah, yeah. Yeah, they're they're, um, uh, they're Yeah, they're very much a relic of the past. I mean, you've now also got, uh, kind of nexus or this sort of hybrid kind of you know villain who is uh to all intents and purposes you know a successful businessman or an entrepreneur or an investor who is uh you know to use the vernacular uh who the is not averse to putting money on the street.

[00:15:48]Um so you've got this kind almost like a bourgeoisification you know or you know embourgeoisement of you know like like almost pronounced that correctly of um you know cocaine trafficking and cocaine use. It's become you know really dynamic in terms of the class reach the use of it culture you know culturally racially and I think when you when you get a contraband or or an illegal activity that transcends so many different stratas of society you're going to get a lot of different people becoming different players with different MOs and I think that that's kind of that's a challenge of course for the authorities in that you know who do they tackle? Do they go for the big boys? Well we you know yeah they can stop a lot of the trafficking. Can they stop the money coming into it the money being laundered? You know they go for a lot of low hanging fruit which is you know the man dem or kind of you know street gangs that are peddling the stuff. What they tend to not do and again there's been a lot of chat about this in recent times is target middle class users who I think are universally seen as part of the driving force behind the rise in in cocaine use. I mean I've had dealers actually say to me, you know, um well, it's supply and demand, isn't it, bro?

[00:17:23]You know.

[00:17:24]If these cats didn't want it, we wouldn't be selling it. And then and so furthermore, you know, they're all in that kind of almost like sort of street level economics, you know.

[00:17:35]They're They're you know, they're really in the situation in terms of gentrification, in terms of, you know, the money that people are a bit the middle classes and the the professions are sort of breaking down now. Like they can easily drop [clears throat] a few hundred, you know, quid a week on as we said fairly heavily cut um product.

[00:18:00]>> Um because cocaine is going in the UK for 100 pounds plus a gram?

[00:18:05]>> I mean, as little as 50 pounds for for what will I mean, a gram what they call a gram here is usually about, you know, it's going to be like sort of 0.6. Something like that. So, yeah, it's a gram in name, but not a gram in weight. So, actually, yeah, yeah, I mean, you'd be like a proper gram would probably be closer to like 100 pounds. But, you know, it's it it you compare that with say Australia, where I think like a gram of cocaine is about, you know, 450, 500, you know, Australian dollars. That's about, I don't know, 250 quid or sort of something like that.

[00:18:43]Um uh so, you know, the States, I don't know what it sort of, you know, what it kind of goes for these days um out there. But, it the UK is a very >> often about 100 100 bucks can be It's been often fairly steady.

[00:19:01]One of the funny things about cocaine economics over the decades is the price has kind of stayed >> change, does it?

[00:19:09]>> even though the value's gone down. So, like because we talk about actually like for example the price of a brick in Colombia is still a couple of thousand dollars for a kilo brick, but it's been that price. So, it's actually gradually got cheaper.

[00:19:24]Yeah, it was originally a bigger luxury product. You know, if you go back to the '70s and to like, you know, Woody Allen, you know, Annie Hall and they like, you know, when he sneezes over the cocaine it's like, you know, you know, a thousand dollars.

[00:19:36]Um okay, so quite a lot of money. Now, you mentioned you mentioned the Mande um as being um meaningless the street gangs that that the London kind of street gangs the black street gangs particularly. Now, obviously the a lot of focus has been on that. So, so who who are they? They're they're not obviously they are they're mixed racially. They're not only black.

[00:19:56]They're mixed racially, but are they predominantly black? Is that right a lot of these these gangs?

[00:20:01]>> Yeah, you you tend to you tend to see in the sort of county lines um you know, the county lines milieu certainly ones that I've um uh dare I say, you know, worked with in the sense of kind of, you know, like written about or kind of filmed with and whatnot.

[00:20:22]Um in London, yeah, predominantly uh black of the yeah Caribbean, but increasingly and yeah and and in some places almost exclusively of yeah African extraction.

[00:20:36]Um uh sometimes even you know, sort of first, second generation, you know, relatively recent uh uh uh communities uh even from places like um Sierra Leone. I mean, one uh fairly notorious South London figure who um shall remain nameless and you'll have to forgive me for certain [laughter] names I prefer to >> Please.

[00:21:04]>> Yeah. The Krays are almost like a sort of museum piece. And of course they're dead. So, you can talk about it. I think even the Adams family, I mean, they're kind of like uh they're almost like a sort of national treasure, I think.

[00:21:17]You kind of talk about those as like, you know, living artifacts. But of course, there are a lot of cats out there who are uh uh who operate in a you know, in a in a dynamic market.

[00:21:31]Um who come from all over the place. Like I say, you know, this one Kano, you know, Sierra Leone background came here um when he was about sort of 12, 13 as a as a consequence of the conflict that was raging in uh um in in Sierra Leone um from what? Sort of 1990 to uh '99.

[00:21:55]Um so came here ostensibly as a refugee, somehow manages to sort of like fall into some kind of like Mandem crew. Again, my memory serves me correctly. I mean, the way that he articulated his um uh you know, his navigation into that world was kind of like what you'd really say is grooming, you know, the classic case of like, "Yo, yo, yo, young blood, come over here." You know, it's like you're 11, 12.

[00:22:30]You know, "What are you saying, bruv?"

[00:22:32]You know, look at you like, "Do you want to make a couple of extra quid?" It's as easy as that. The the the chat is informal, it's casual.

[00:22:40]Kids coming from a like war-torn parts of the world. And that's not to say that they're all of that background, you know, I mean, there are many kids who you know, you you could say that oh, they're good middle-class kids and they're involved.

[00:22:53]Um but with you know, with these with those kind of characters, what you find is they're also coming from a background that and a culture where, you know, as we know tragically with the Sierra Leone, you know, like child soldiering was a big thing there, you know, a civil war involving what, 5 million people of which anywhere between 50,000 to 100,000 people were killed.

[00:23:26]And a lot of the protagonists a lot of the driving force behind that, you know, behind that conflict were just kids, kids with like AK-47s. So, you get these kids coming who over to the UK, they've been culturalized in that way.

[00:23:47]So, they understand actually, instinctively, the whole notion of kind of like grooming because many of them or their older brothers or uncles or, you know, fathers or whatnot would have been groomed in a similar sort of way to operate in these kind of, you know, effectively rebel gangs.

[00:24:07]>> Just that that that is an amazing parallel there with the MS-13, the Mara Salvatrucha 13 in Los Angeles in the way that you had kids running from the civil war in El Salvador in the '80s. Some of them who had been child soldiers in the military or in the guerrillas and then came and then formed these these gangs. Um they're now obviously in in Los Angeles in California, which is kind of a uh you know, this massive gang culture going back, you know, 100 years, 150 years.

[00:24:42]And a lot of gangs along ethnic lines, although it's it's still again it's more complicated, but like, you know, you had um you know, Latino street gangs and then the MS-13 could become a Salvadoran street gang.

[00:24:55]Um and the Bloods and the Crips being predominantly African-American street gangs. Now, how do the racial politics play in London inside the black community, which is obviously so different from the American black community, or inside between the black community and you also have, you know, uh Asian British and Latino and everything you have in London now these days?

[00:25:17]>> Yeah, so I I'd say that there are um you know, there are situations where and again, I've reported on this where you get certain ethnic gangs like Turkish and Albanian gangs outsourcing um uh their dirty work to predominantly black street gang operators.

[00:25:44]Um, so you know, there have there have been in recent times um hits and attempted hits particularly up in uh North London, which has got a big Turkish community there where rival Turkish gangs vying for drug territory have carried out tip-for-tat hits on each other. Some successful in terms of, you know, terminating whoever it it was they were after, some unsuccessful. A young um girl, for instance, was uh caught in the crossfire of um an attempted assassination of a uh suspected um Turkish drug gang member up in um Green Lanes up in North London.

[00:26:34]And uh I think she was about 7 8 years old caught in a crossfire. Wasn't killed, but a bullet lodged in her in her head. Very recently, just a few months ago that the two perpetrators behind this were convicted of it. Two young black guys, you know, recruited by a Turkish outfit um to do that sort of dirty dirty work. So, and then what you'll find above um Turks and Albanians, and it comes back to this point about, you know, um money being put on the street or the franchising or the kind of, you know, uh the bourgeois nature of some of the sort of higher end of drug dealing and drug trafficking in the UK is that invariably there'll be these sort of more of the old school um uh indigenous or, you know, English British and Irish kind of villainy behind that.

[00:27:33]So, you've got this sort of almost like a you know, a Neapolitan kind of set up of like different sort of shades until you get to the bottom. Now, that that's not to say that these things aren't flipped where you've got major um you know, major black organized crime figures running things and farming their dirty work out to whoever and whatever, you know.

[00:28:00]But, those, you know, those groups, the the serious end of the uh of black villainy will tend to keep it within the culture. Whereas, like I say, a lot of these other sort of groups or ethnic groups, they're farming out a lot of the really kind of like, you know, for 100 pounds like the really shitty stuff to young black men who are vulnerable and easy to recruit for many different reasons.

[00:28:29]>> So, yeah, you you mentioned the Turkish gangs there. Let's go to that in a second cuz they're serious players that are very underreported, I think. The Turkish organized crime.

[00:28:39]Uh but just for a second before then, getting into that, uh talking about the the street gang element, like who are the are the biggest kind of street gangs in London? Like, how many players do they have? Are there particular names? Which neighborhoods?

[00:28:56]Which areas the biggest >> Yeah.

[00:28:59]Um you know, there's I think there's estimated in London on the you know, in in the Met's gang matrix, as it were, if I memory serves me correctly, there is something about I don't know, in the region of about 15,000 uh um uh gang members of uh various description associated with various street gangs. I mean, in some ways I'm loath to kind of um pull out any any any names, and I'll tell you why. The oddly enough, there are uh there are street gangs in in London or in the UK who demonstrably uh given what they do, how they operate, how you know, their account of you know, psychological subjectivity for want of a better term is such that they look like gang members, they act like gang members, they're involved in gang activity. Well, if you're in a gang, right? They'll say, "No, I'm not in a gang."

[00:30:10]And it's like, "Well, what are you then?" "Well, we're a collection of people who just sort of do stuff." And now now that is that's something that's [laughter] that's not under >> true, yeah. I I I think so. It is a true distinction in some ways. It's it's like in not in a gang in a sense of we've got a very specific name, or some of them even they have a name even, but they're just like known as the the Tottenham boys or whatever. They're the the the something, yeah.

[00:30:40]>> Yeah, so I I really I I filmed with a bunch of cats some years ago who had the who had the street gang named Dem Africans.

[00:30:50]>> Right.

[00:30:51]>> And I was saying, "Where did you know, where did this name come from?"

[00:30:56]And they said, "Well, we you know, like we didn't call ourselves the Dem Africans." I said, "Well, how did it come about?" They said, "Well, you know, people used to see us on road, and they and they say, 'Oh, like such and such site, they're up to so and so.' What who? The Dem Africans."

[00:31:10]So So, they became known as Dem Africans. So, So, you've got this kind of curious kind of like linguistic journey that some of these cats go on.

[00:31:21]And they acquire a name. Now, they will They will I wouldn't say they would use the name, but they won't disassociate themselves from the name, but they won't kind of claim it as as as as it being some sort of, you know, gang brand.

[00:31:38]Whereas, you'll get others like, I don't know, you know, it's sort of 67 or whoever. Well, you know, they will conjure up some sort of name.

[00:31:49]Um you know, such and such shower posse or whoever.

[00:31:54]And it'll be well, you know, the Mandem Crew or like, you know, whatnot. Like where they have apparently invented a name or they've come up with a name for themselves. But when you challenge them or sort of put it to them, "Well, this kind of sounds gangy and it's it seems from the activity that you're involved in that you're a gang." "Well, we're not a gang. We're a collection of individuals that Yeah, sometimes we shot food, innit? But we're just from the same estate. Or we just went to school with each other. Or, you know, we're we're a drill collective." Or what it There'll always be some other thing that is the unifying or connective tissue other than criminal activity. Now, this is I would say isn't unique to contemporary street gangs. You can go right back through the history of sort of gangs.

[00:32:47]And I'm thinking here even of the likes of you sort of, you know, you you Bugsy Siegels or even uh in popular culture when you look at sort of like fictionalized gangs like, you know, like the Sopranos or whatnot. They'll call themselves, you know, a crew, an outfit, or what what it's put to them oh, you're a gang.

[00:33:08]You know, you're involved in organized crime. I'm not involved in organized crime. I'm a businessman. I'm an entrepreneur. I'm a property I'm anything other than patently what you can see I am.

[00:33:23]>> Or or criminal basically denial. Yeah, the mafia denial. No, there's no mafia.

[00:33:27]What's that What's the mafia? That's just a That's just some word. Mafia, is it? What's the What's the No, there's no Cosa Nostra.

[00:33:31]>> Exactly.

[00:33:32]>> That's just like some word. It's like, "No." So, okay, so you've got these these crews now.

[00:33:37]They're involved in uh some activities uh drug dealing as we mentioned, but also things There is like organized uh phone theft >> Yeah.

[00:33:48]>> some of these crews and which has kind of got made London give them quite a bad name to London. And everyone you can't walk on the street for 5 minutes without somebody snatching your phone.

[00:33:58]>> Yeah. I mean, I have um I haven't experienced this myself, but um not so long ago I was with um some friends of mine and we were on a night out and um pal of mine he was slightly worse for wear. He was uh He just did that classic movie.

[00:34:15]Standing on the curb, on his mobile phone, trying to get an Uber.

[00:34:22]Guy comes whizzing by on an e-bike.

[00:34:24]Boom.

[00:34:26]Phone right out of his I mean, the fellow must have been doing about 30 35 miles an hour. I mean, he's like on one of these souped-up black e-bikes.

[00:34:36]He was gone. We chased after he, you know, he was long gone. And he, like, had a balaclava on all out. In my local, uh, supermarket twice in the car park, I've seen the same two individuals, um, who, again, balaclava'd up, but I could see that, you know, that, uh, clearly they're white.

[00:35:00]I would assume, and again, this is a bit of a reach, but probably, um, probably, you know, they're going to be Eastern European, perhaps. And why I say that, not to cast, you know, aspersions on the East Eastern European communities, uh, the way that they were dressed and their level of organization was such that, you know, local criminals don't operate in this way. So, uh, the first time I saw them, um, it was, um, in the evening. They were going around, they had these little sort of, um, uh, you know, these little sort of like torches, and they're kind of looking in through the into the backs of cars. What's that?

[00:35:43]Then had like a sort of automatic, and they've, uh, you know, um, center punch.

[00:35:49]And they were just whizzing around and they're like looking in there, and the moment they saw something, boom, like that, window goes, they're in, door open, bang, and they're off.

[00:35:58]Twice I've seen the the same two individuals. They And then, just recently, and again, without getting into too much detail, um, the son of a close friend of mine was out just a few nights ago with some some friends in Camden Town, and was, again, uh, assailed by a guy on an e-bike with a I can't I can't say a [ __ ] machete.

[00:36:26]Right?

[00:36:27]Um, and, uh, >> fortunately my my friend's son, he managed to, you know, get away, but one of his friends was was not so lucky. And um he he was uh he was cut by this guy.

[00:36:43]And has sustained um you know, quite serious injury as a result of it. Um just a couple of months ago, there was uh um the son of a guy uh called Chris Sullivan, who used to own and run um a famous nightclub in London called the Wag Club.

[00:37:03]His son was up on Primrose Hill, very affluent part of North London. I'm sure you're aware of it. Um was up there making a video with some friends, a group of kind of like, you know, sort of call them what they what you hood rats, mandem, whatever.

[00:37:23]Approached him, attempted to, you know, steal his kit, I think, and he was stabbed and and killed.

[00:37:29]Um as a result of this. So, there's a lot of this, you know, there's a lot of the a kind of like street-level violent crime that involves, you know, knives, often these kind of like souped-up e-bikes or, you know, it it it's become its own kind of subculture.

[00:37:50]>> So, an interesting thing, if we look at the overall number of murders in London, it's still way lower than the worst US cities.

[00:38:01]Sure. And way lower than than Latin American the bad Latin American cities.

[00:38:06]So, they So, people say, "Well, it comes back to actually, you know, London's not that bad." And they do tend to solve murders. Like, generally when there's murders, like the the the the clearance rate is pretty decent, I think. Is that Is that correct?

[00:38:19]>> Yeah, and and and for the most part crime in many uh by many measures and in particular parts of the country and and and in particular sort of like areas of criminal activity has been falling, you know, um >> But I was going to I was going to flip that one a bit also say on the murders the clearance rate is pretty good and they're relatively low but we have to watch out for them there are real gangs and real gang murders.

[00:38:51]But on the petty crime side and as you described on the phone theft sometimes the say the murder and the stabbing was more serious incident but on the the phone theft it can be with the guy with the machete or car robbers it's pretty bad and and and that's people's perception of crime and disorder is often measured off that petty crime they see which can even be worse from what you're saying than Mexico City for example.

[00:39:21]>> Yeah and I I think that's a really good point. I think part of that is is because of quite literal perceptions of crime in London and big cities in the UK and by that I mean you know a lot of some really obscene gang fights or stabbings or what not happen to be caught on camera. You know, we're in a you know living in a country where there's a high penetration of mobile phone usage. You know, people are constantly on their on their phone so it doesn't take much to oh look someone's getting stabbed there you know, to go and that that so you know, there's a lot of to use the you know, the kind of um crime prevention vernacular there's a lot of eyes on the street. Um the problem is is that the eyes on the street are not deterring anyone from committing these sort of crimes.

[00:40:20]They're just recording them. So, and then putting them out there. So, you know, someone will say, "Oh, that's a tasty stabbing." Go straight up on YouTube, Twitter, or whatnot. Um often these things are co-opted by uh um you know, people with a political agenda. And so, then we get the whole kind of cultural enrichment sort of, you know, piss take sort of like attached to them.

[00:40:44]Um and it looks bad. I mean, I've seen it and I see I I'd say I don't pretty much on a daily basis I'll get a good like half dozen clips of um it it could be, you know, a couple of guys on a on a tube or a train platform, you know, like trying to hack away at each other. It'd be like three guys chasing a guy around a car with like machetes. It'd be, you know, a gang descending on a car, you know, smashing the windows in with mache- I mean, it's like it's like walking down the >> The worst thing is the algorithms give feed us this stuff.

[00:41:20]Like I've been given the last day England and Argentina fans fighting.

[00:41:24]I've been like constantly >> [laughter] >> They're not even real fights most of the time. It's like shouting and like >> So, one thing that struck me about Mexico is like like gang. There's a lot of police here. And now, you know, news flash, you tend to get a lot of police where there's a lot of crime.

[00:41:41]Yeah. Or a lot of police where the >> state >> and its relationship to the public is of a certain kind of, you know, there's a certain political social contract there, let's say.

[00:41:55]Um I remember being in uh where is it? I think in Tulum, even in, you know, quite sort of small yeah you know, muy tranquilo sort of like parts of Mexico where like it seemed like proportionate to the population got this a a of police in, you know, standing on street corners with pump action shotguns.

[00:42:15]>> Uh well, the uh and a big issue there in here is that like a lot of those police officers are actually working for the cartel and working under the cartel.

[00:42:24]>> [laughter] >> I mean, literally uh and I mean, it can be the case that they they literally are taking orders from the cartel, unfortunately. So so so going on uh then about the some of the Turkish and Albanian um organized crime, which is which is a big element. So like the the a lot of the the kind of London mandem street gangs are more visible and people kind of see them and on the news, but who's really moving money and drugs and some of the other groups? I know in my home city of Brighton, um then the it's a lot of where it used to be a lot of some of the kids I went to school with selling uh cocaine. Now it's Albanians.

[00:43:04]Um >> Yeah, yeah.

[00:43:05]>> Um uh doing that. Um so they're definitely moving a lot. Um do you have a sense? Do you know Have you gone much into this like of like who the Turkey or Turkish Kurdish Albanian? Have you got a sense of who the the kind of players are and how they move among these communities?

[00:43:25]>> Yeah, they um since the you know, since the early '70s when you had the um uh the conflict in um in Cyprus and a lot of Turkish Cypriots came to the UK um then of course, you know, many of them they they came, set up cash businesses, typically yeah, chip fish and chip shops, kebab shops, you know, you see a lot of that.

[00:43:54]Uh Turks involved in that, bit of the rag trade. Uh in more recent times of course, and again, it's become this a real trope amongst um detractors, but also you know, anyone who's got an inquiring mind will sort of look at the proliferation of Kurdish barber shops, for instance. It's become this sort of, you know, Kurdish barber shops are like the new chip shop. It's like, God, that many people getting their, you know, their hair cut, or is this just some sort of front? I mean, even in my unnamed part of South London, I was getting I mean, we got barbers like, you know, like they It's like they're going out of fashion around there. And you walk past these places and there there'll just be some sort of like, you know, this barber like, you know, like that.

[00:44:44]They don't really seem to be like sort of like doing much. Um, but it'll be like a brand spanking new barber shop.

[00:44:50]>> Although I would have to defend a little bit Turkish barber shop. [laughter] Because I do actually, when I go back to the UK, when I go back to the UK, I generally do go for a for a for a shave and a cut, which I definitely don't do anyone that in Turkish barber shops. And I do find they offer give a pretty good service, the ones I go to.

[00:45:08]>> [laughter] >> As as as looks may be deceiving, but every now and again, I'm not averse to, you know, going into one of these places myself and getting a nice kind of hot towel treatment and what have you. But again, it's it's an I think that, you know, there's a real theme kind of like coming out of that, that, you know, again, you you know, you know, and unsurprisingly sort of like, you know, um, intriguing conversation. You know, we always have these great conversations and I think that jokes aside, what comes out of it is you see the conflict between perception and reality, you know, and where perception can uh, besmirch or, you know, sully a community's reputation, but where within that, you you in this kind of like, you know, invasion of the body snatchers type way that there are people within these communities that have cannibalized these communities and the legitimate trades that people do within them.

[00:46:13]And and particularly in communities where if you you know, you're Turkish, you're Kurdish. I mean, we saw you know, um it used to be the case back in the day being, you know, Italian coffee shops, you know, if you had an Italian coffee shop on, you know, mob, you know, Maltese, you know, like sort of like greasy spoon, oh yeah, you know, obviously they're involved anything to do with, you know, Jewish right, you know, obviously money laundering, anything to do with any ethnic group involved in a cash-based business, you know, the stereotype was oh, they're at it, you know, and patently there's always a minority that is and what I find intriguing about this ethnic uh sort of uh um makeup uh or you know, all the ethnic nature of crime in in particularly in London is that when you look at um uh black communities or and black individuals that were involved in criminal activity, there's almost an absence of that. It's like the mandem that they're just like it's like the mandem that it's like they say like you know, man don't need no front, you know, I'm just going out there and committing bare crime.

[00:47:29]>> They have their loud ambition. I mean, like that that you said about criminals, I mean, my my my granddad was Italian and and you look at the you moved to the UK. My last name is Italian. Um the so you go back if you look at like English Italians, British Italians and look at famous ones, there's quite a few gangsters or or you know, in that list, you know, going back back in the day again, you know, actually some of the early ones back in the 30s and some of the race tracks and stuff as as well talking about >> Right, yeah.

[00:47:58]>> and all of this kind of stuff. So so absolutely um Uh so but like with the with the Albanians and the Turkish and the Kurdish I mean like I know you have I mean again is is is there is the Albanian mafia is a very strong organized tradition.

[00:48:15]And and a guy I know who does a lot of stuff in Mexico he went and did immersed himself and I talked to him one time he immersed himself Spanish guy a lot of stuff in the Albanian mafia and he said that you know there's a strong tradition going back there of kind of organized crime with its own history.

[00:48:34]>> So wonder how much that like how they operate in the UK is it like you know are they is it stuff from back home in Albania?

[00:48:41]Have they got different families operating? I don't I don't know if you've got any sense of that. I know somebody else called them um another guy I talked to who was involved in drug drug dealing and drug trafficking in in Scandinavia.

[00:48:55]And he called them Hellbanians.

[00:48:57]>> [laughter] >> They're they're very very famous so I don't know if we've got we've got much sense of the Albanian or they're not really that penetrated in terms of what we know about the the stuff in the UK.

[00:49:07]>> Yeah they they sort of like a lot of um a lot of ethnic groups that set up shop either to do legitimate business or illegitimate business they tend to you know quite literally set up shop in in certain parts of town and then become associated with that. So Albanians have got a heavy association with um Plumbstead in Southeast London or Woolwich around that sort of way. What's what's interesting I found over the years about Albanians and their criminality and on the one hand you've got as as you rightly say this sort of old school almost like so you know Italianite sort of like hey and all of that sort of thing and smoking a roll-up outside a kind of, you know, some um, >> [clears throat] >> you know, downtrodden kind of, you know, sports club or community center or something.

[00:50:05]But then that's made you really sort of new school of um, Albanian criminals. It's um, and again, I know um, um, I know uh, cats from the music industry in the UK who've kind of intersected with these characters where they've embraced the whole sort of drill trap kind of culture and have created this Albanian trap thing, you know, again with the, you know, the wife beaters, yeah, you know, the fat rides, all of that and it's like, whoa, you know, that's okay, that's very different from the old school sort of thing. Now, these characters, because of their intersection with um, indigenous, ethnic, main, you know, Caribbean or West African, you know, but British street gangs have adopted that, you know, that that look, that psychological account, um, which, yeah, is very different from from the old school account. And but then you get these tensions between that, much in the same way that you get the tensions between the old school Southeast or East London or North London, you know, white English villainy or you kind of Irish kind of criminal outfits like the Kinahans or whatnot where, you know, their their vibe, if you like, is to keep as low profile as they can, treating like it's a business, you know, it's just a business that happens to kind of be involved in, you know, racketeering, drug dealing, people smuggling, you know, occasional hits and whatnot, but they're not into the whole sort of blingy, showy, big car kind of like thing until they can legitimize it somewhere. Then all of a sudden, they're off to Dubai and they're on the Encro phones and it. So, what I'm saying is basically is that everybody's at it in some way, shape or form and everyone's got a kind of if you like an ethnic sort of spin on it that's become very much part of you know, of modern times. We see it in Mexico, don't we? With um Oh god, I mean I wrote a piece about this for Unheard of while back where the the whole cosmetic surgery >> Oh yeah, the buchonas and the whole like I mean I mean yeah, Mexico's a whole different level of insane organized crime culture. I think we have 5 minutes left. Um but I just saw George conclude with some of this stuff. Uh you know, we see you know, compared to the '90s, say when when we were growing up.

[00:52:43]>> [laughter] >> And I you know, do we Is it is Do you feel like things have got better or worse or the same since then? And do you think it's going in a a worrying direction or you think it's just kind of like the level of crime that you expect in a modern society right now?

[00:53:03]>> Um that's a good question. I think in some ways, you know, that um a society gets the sort of crime that befits its its affluence, its development, its kind of status in the world. So, you know, uh before mobile phones existed uh to the extent that they do and in the the nature that they do, we did not have this kind of street crime where people are whizzing around on e-bikes that are themselves serious pieces of technology and kit that someone has acquired from somewhere and has paid good money for, you know, so we see people standing around on street corner and I'm not saying this because you're well, you know, you reap what you sow, but if you're going to stand around on a street corner half cut with a thousand pounds worth of tech in you know, in your hands and you're going to do this or be part of a culture that is doing this in spades, criminals are adept at saying like, you know what, bruv, I don't really need to be doing that drug thing cuz I could go I can get myself an e-bike, get out there and just start touring mobile phones, you know, if you think of you know, criminals are are very innovative.

[00:54:22]They're not often very clever in in terms of joining the dots up between, you know, kind of entry, extraction, you know, kind of getting away with it, defending their corner once they have been sort of like uh uh taken to task by the authorities, but they're often very good at innovating ways and means of committing new forms of crime that previously didn't exist or they've adapted and changed to suit, you know, the contemporary vibe. So, you know, we saw it and and we've been seeing increasingly as we become a bit, you know, a less and less cash-based society, you know, criminals have got to get their hands on on money somehow and that money does not exist in cash in the way that it used to be. So, we don't see banks getting robbed. We don't see post offices getting robbed. We have, you know, the days of you know, some little firm going over the cobbles with a pair of nostrils as they used to call them, you know, uh um and a swag bag, they're gone because there's no money to be stolen.

[00:55:32]So, criminals will hit other criminals who who got cash.

[00:55:36]>> Right.

[00:55:37]So, so >> and a of violence amongst themselves.

[00:55:39]>> One thing I have seen is like uh you know around different circumstances, different places where you have level of violence is like that, like that, and then suddenly it goes boom.

[00:55:48]Um and when you get gangs established and they're so so they're kind of street gangs and whatever and then you get a new generation they become much more serious organized crime. So these things could go bad. Do you think the trend is looking okay or looking bad in the UK from where we we are?

[00:56:03]>> Um I think I think patently what the powers that be have to get on top of and not just for all the obvious political reasons is the movement and flow of people into and out of the country who are undocumented or who are you know up to some nefarious activity and at times you know are coming with an agenda. So for instance, one of the things that was pointed out to me, you know, a long time ago and before we got this real sort of serious spike in you know people crossing the channel and boat people and whatnot. Um senior police officer would told me at the Met when I was investigating um gun running. And wanted to interestingly enough again Albanians were key figures in bringing weapons into the country.

[00:57:04]Um uh and this uh this senior cop said to me, "Well, look, if you can get firearms into the country, you can pretty much get anything."

[00:57:13]And let's face it, if you can get bodies into the country, why aren't you going to maximize your return on investment? If I can smuggle people into the country, I can get them to carry what I want into the country as well. So what you know, a lot of the focus has been on people trafficking and snakeheads and illegal movement of people in terms of the people themselves without thinking, well, what these people are also conduits for a whole bunch of contraband that we're you know, we we've taken our eyes off them.

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