Gun war

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This week...crime

By Chris Buckland

LIKE rats they scuttle through the alleyways and passages carrying a deadly plague.

Some are just kids, hoods hiding their faces. But not their shame. For they have no shame.

Their cheap weapons—re-activated replicas or £150 air-pistols modified to fire real bullets—are brandished like fashion accessories.

Tonight they are hidden in the sprawling estates in case of a police swoop on the latest distribution of white death:heroin, cocaine and its instantly addictive derivative, crack.

Welcome to Nottingham, the nation's gun capital. Welcome to Britain, where most official crime statistics are heading down but, according to a News of the World poll, fewer than one in five of us believe it.

The city once famed for Robin Hood is now notorious for robbing hoods and the miserable children, some as young as 12, they use as their distributors.

Around a third of all crime in the city and surrounding county is committed by under-18s. Kids—black, white and Asian (this is equal opportunity ruin)—reckon being the foot-soldiers of drug barons is a neat career move.

Who wants to slave in a burger bar for the minimum wage when the twisted glamour of drug-pushing can quickly lead to posh cars and girlfriends attracted by the smell of money and the stench of danger?

We are in St Ann's council estate, the type that can be found all over Britain, with its gangs, drug abuse, dysfunctional families and yobs running wild.

Bullet

One in five here have reading difficulties and only 25 per cent will leave school with five or more GCSEs. Unemployment is twice that of the rest of the city, robberies 50 per cent higher.

The majority are decent families, trying to live normal lives in an area where burglary rates are four times the national average and violence against the person twice as high.

Just two days ago a man was killed in broad daylight outside the Wheeltappers pub in Nottingham after a scuffle ended in a shooting.

The ultimate penalty—death—also awaits those who try to muscle in on a rival's territory, those who undersell competitors or fail to pay for supplies.

Worse, innocents who simply get in the way are shown no mercy. Some are victims of mistaken identity. Others are hit by a stray bullet in a gang shoot-out, like 14-year-old Danielle Beccan (right) who died last October on her way home from a night at the fair.

Or 22-year-old Marvyn Bradshaw. After being found guilty his killer, Michael O'Brien, screamed at his victim's family: "I'm not bothered. I'm a bad boy. Your son looked like a doughnut with a big hole in his head."

O'Brien's mother and stepfather were executed just weeks later, their murder thought to have been a £10,000 underworld hit ordered by a Nottingham gang that their son had crossed.

My guide to St Ann's is Shane, 38, a gangly ex-villain with convictions for possession of Class A drugs, possession of a firearm and cigarette smuggling. "There are hundreds of guns out there," he says. "Many use home-made bullets that can't be traced."

But why Nottingham? Why a friendly city, where around a fifth of the 275,000 population are students, a metropolis famed as a shopping, entertainment and cultural mecca?

In the city's dark side, three-quarters of those arrested for burglaries or robberies have tested positive for hard drugs.

Nottingham is a stark example of the drug and gang culture that has infected Britain, where half of crime such as theft is carried out to get cash for drugs, a problem costing us £18BILLION a year.

The main reason Nottingham is a haven for drugs gangs and Yardie gunmen is agreed on by ex-cops and dealers alike.

It is poor policing.

Peter Coles, who led the city's CID until 1996, blames poor detective skills and Yardies, whose motto is: "Shoot first. Then shoot again."

He says: "A lot of criminals in the city were mere council estate thugs a few years back. If you don't target them they become super-thugs sitting on millions and virtually untouchable.

"One family live in a council house but bring in 20 kilos of cocaine and heroin a week.

"But the government are more obsessed with league tables than catching the Mr Bigs."

With 34 murders in three years— 17 drug gang-related with most of the killers still free—the local force is overwhelmed and underwhelming.

And where Nottingham leads, Britain seems destined to follow.

The police are being hamstrung by paperwork, political correctness and the alienation of traditional supporters—the decent working and middle classes who see their concerns relegated while they are an easy touch for any minor infringement to improve the clear-up rate.

But the real trouble is for every jailed drug dealer, ten wait to take his place. For every wrap of heroin seized a kilo comes into Britain. For every junkie cured, a dozen are lured by cheaper prices and the spiking of cannabis with heroin.

The rats are winning this war.