Young Guns: Inside the Violent World of Britain's Street Gangs by Hackman Steve

Author:Hackman, Steve [Hackman, Steve]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Milo Books
Published: 2011-02-23T23:00:00+00:00

Derby

DERBYSHIRE IS A predominantly rural county, a far stretch from the sprawling inner-cities of Greater London or the soaring tower blocks of Strathclyde and Merseyside. The Derbyshire Constabulary website has a section reporting the number of sheep rustled, an indicator of the relatively low crime rate within the region (182 ewes and 220 lambs were stolen between January 2009 and January 2010).

Whilst the majority of the county that it falls within remains relatively crime-free, Derby itself is home to some tough estates with high rates of gun crime and drug abuse. Whereas cities such as Glasgow and Liverpool have seen most gang-related violence in traditionally ‘white’ areas, most of Derby’s firms operate solely within the black community. Normanton has one of the worst problems with firearms, with youths from the area frequently clashing with those from the nearby Austin Estate.

Normanton is home to Derby’s largest concentration of black and Asian residents, with sizeable Pakistani, Bangladeshi and Afro-Caribbean communities. Indeed fifty per cent of the city’s ethnic minorities can be found in the locality, with more than 180 nationalities making it one of the UK’s most culturally diverse areas. It also has the lowest paid workers, highest crime rate and one of the highest rates of prostitution in the country.

The Austin Estate in Sinfin is another low-income area with widespread unemployment and a burglary level that is twice the city’s average. Although its population is almost four-fifths white, it is also home to the Browning Circle Terrorist Crip Set, a largely black street gangs.

The ‘BCT’ developed from a group of friends who hung out together in the Browning Circle area of the estate. When a teenage boy from Sinfin got into a fight with a member of a similar group from Normanton and Allenton, they immediately jumped to his defence. ‘That’s when younger people started saying they were A1 or BCT,’ explained a member of the Normanton/Allenton faction. ‘They would get into disputes and fight and eventually, everyone in the area joined the so-called A1 gang.’

Animosity between the two groups increased until there was a clear division between the two parts of the city. They took their gang ‘colours’ to a ridiculous degree: the A1 even started wearing purple shoelaces and the Crip Set wore blue and black. The local police force reported children as young as nine wearing A1 colours and chanting the name of the gang. Teachers at the local schools became aware of the tension in the area and started sending pupils home for wearing purple clothes. As the months went by, they progressed from fists to knives to 9mm pistols and automatic weapons. Soon the two sides were involved in regular shootouts, meeting up specifically to fight with one another.

It was during one of these organised confrontations that the first death occurred. Fifteen-year-old Kadeem ‘Snipez’ Blackwood, a member of the ‘youth wing’ of the BCT, was challenged to a fist-fight after allegedly disrespecting the mother of a senior A1 member. Blackwood weighed seventeen stone and was particularly well built.

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