Rising East Online

Lock, Stock London

Mythical Guns and the Legend of Lost Contact

—Mitchell Panayis

The Gulf between police and people is as wide in Peckham as it is in Basra.

The bell ringing in the background makes me a bit nervous as the tide of teens washes toward me. The smaller ones fade to the edges, while the elders surge through the middle, moving as one. Some could almost be men: 6ft, broad shouldered, facial hair clipped and razored into sleek designs. A swagger.

They’re my target. The 15 and 16-year-old young and lawless of East London. Following the teenage murders in Streatham, Clapham, Peckham and Hackney, it seems the police have as much control of our ‘civilised’ capital as the British Army has over the war-torn cities of southern Iraq. And I am here to ask why.

I prepare for approach. “Chill out” I tell myself, for I have walked these streets a thousand times. Kids reach into their jacket, and if I’m to believe the thousands of words wasted on the subject recently, they are grabbing their Macs or Glocks or revolvers for a shooting spree. But it’s more Big Mac than machine gun. Drinks. Gum. Cigarettes.

Sharing fags while strolling past, the crowd starts to lighten. The alley that runs between tower blocks and the school opens onto the high road where the typical East London school kids are in sweet shops or buying chip rolls or just hanging around. Probably waiting for the commuters to come off the train so they can throw mayo or ketchup on their suits and try their luck with a secretary.

Now is the time. A group of five lads bowl through my pathway, pants half way down their backside, low-batts style. I turn on the tape recorder in my pocket and introduce myself as a student journalist. They jump at the chance of airing their views and performing their bravado act. Let’s talk about guns.

“We call them bangers”, says the one who seems youngest. “You can get ‘em easy round ere, couple bills man, cheap… every one knows if you’re a gun man and they won’t step to you on the street.

“Everyone thinks everyone else has got one, so they either get one themselves or pretend they got one, which makes more people get one, pretend to have one, and it goes on and on.”

They all chip in and I feel like the only woman in a bar being bombarded with macho tales from desperate men fighting for my attention. Except one, a tall and brooding ‘hoody’ with don’t-mess-with-me eyes. I look at him and know he has something to say. He’s my target. I’ll get him later.

How does it happen? Tessa Jowell, MP for the Peckham area where shootings occurred recently, blames video games for these tragedies. Next! Claudia Webbe, an advisor to the Met’s Operation Trident, which targets black-on-black gun crime, believes it is depravation and disadvantage which breeds killers. Maybe.

But London has always been a breeding ground for murderers. Indigenous whites have been shooting up these parts for years, although prompting less public outrage. Guns have long been on our doorstep; from the Krays in the 60’s, to Terry Adams, who was recently jailed for money laundering but who is linked by the police to up to 30 murders, So why are these predominantly black-on-black killings different?

Casual killers: James Andre Smartt-Ford was gunned down at Streatham Ice Arena in front of onlookers. The age: Billy Cox was just 15 when he was shot dead. The ruthlessness: Michael Dosunmu was killed in his bedroom, Craig Thoms was chased while he reversed his car, till the gunmen caught up with him and murdered him in the street.

I think of what the school kid said earlier about other kids pretending to have guns. Well, surely if they are just pretending, like he probably is about knowing where to get one, then the danger cannot be as widespread as the people talking about. However, the very fact that they are pretending could be a significant catalyst for today’s situation. It’s a way of rebelling, but it highlights the disconnect between young men and all kinds of authority. The police lost their grip and now the youth are making a dash for it. They are running further away from an establishment that can’t keep up. They are using gun talk as a way of proving they are untouchable, outside the grip of society. It’s a melodramatic script, but theirs is also a dangerous talk to talk; and a few people are stopped from walking as a result. Stopped dead.

Which leads me to another question. How can the police mastermind the downfall of middle-aged, organised, professional killers, yet haven’t the first clue of how to catch a 15 year old gun-toter who doesn’t even wear a balaclava?

“Because kids think it’s cool”. When he speaks the group shuts up. I nick name him ‘The Silencer’. “Yes, but why do they think, and rightly so, that they’ll get away with it?

“Cos the Feds ain’t gotta clue what goes on in these ends. They don’t know me. I’m just another black yout’ to them… one of many blacks. And not only don’t they know me, but the black people won’t tell them who I am either… Either they hate the Feds, or they’re scared of the gun man finding out who grassed him up.”

He speaks with his hands, the smoke billowing from the fag in his fingers making all sorts of shapes: “You come here, you find out a thing or two, but the police can’t just come here and get a story.”

I’ve heard tales of bygone days where criminals and coppers would drink in the same boozers. It was like a game to them. A chance to outwit the opponent. The police knew by face and area who was who, and what was their crime of choice. They wouldn’t necessarily hit their target, but they knew where to aim. Every now and again they could dip their toes into the water and check the temperature. Who had a spat with whom. What pubs it was likely to go off in. Who was out for revenge. They were in the area enough to be in with a chance.

Now? No chance. The police and the youth are like two separate worlds running parallel to each other with no bridges or intersections, both sides peering over at the other across the divide. But too far away to see. Anything.

Still making shapes, the Silencer gives me the thesis with his hands as well as words: “For the Feds, not just the Feds actually, but the councils, the social people, the lock ups, to have a chance of winning the battle, they need to work like this”: he locks his fingers from his left hand into his right.

“But, this is the cops” – he makes a fist with his left hand – “and this is us”. He makes a fist with his right hand and smashes it with his left. “They can’t get in, cos they’re coming at us like a fist of power. They can’t adapt or change or understand. And that suits the gun men just cool, you see?”

I do see. I see pictures of Armed CO19 officers patrolling the streets of south London with an “I hope I get to shoot someone” look in their eye. They look like the British in Basra. Out of place. Out of sync. Out of touch.

I’m not saying we don’t need armed officers. But police being on the street for a couple of days is only going to help for a couple of days. After the July 2005 bombings, crime plunged for a week or two perhaps due to the visible presence of so many officers in the capital, or perhaps as some believe, because of a sense of togetherness coming from the bombings or from winning the Olympics, or both. In any case, when the officers went back to their desk, crime levels went back up to normality.

These crimes ripping communities apart can, as police keep preaching, be challenged by communities. A thousand demonstrators marched by torchlight across the London Boroughs of Southwark and Lambeth to raise awareness of the serious issues blighting their communities. Christian leaders have taken to the streets for the same reason. And the police?

“We want to involve all of London’s communities.. Through talking and listening to you and responding to your needs and those of your community, you will have more confidence and trust in the police. You will feel confident in coming forward with suggestions and information that will help make London safer”.

That’s the policy. But these are just words. The objectives need to be realised through practising what you preach. It’s not what you say but what you do. And the communities aren’t going to be fooled by seductive language.

Silencer’s friends have walked off now. Bored with talk of the underlying problems with kids and crime. They want the bang-bang talk back. They want to make guns out of their fingers and aim it at my face and pretend to blow my head off like camera crews and reporters up and down the country have gone looking for. It makes great TV. But I’m not here for that. That is not finding out anything and it’s not solving problems.

Silencer looks at the path his friends have taken. He drags on the fag that is now past the start of the butt, looking like he’s sucking the tips of his fingers. His shaven head is obscured by smoke. “It sounds funny, but we all look the same to them, ha ha!” With that, he tosses his cigarette into the curb and wanders off.

My mind starts to wander, and I see the situation here in Newham, well the whole of London really, as a mini Iraq. Over there the British Army has nothing in common with the Iraqi people. They don’t know the language, the culture, the terrain. They are outsiders. There is no infiltration. That seems to be the case here, on the streets of London. The police and the government have no sense of the people they are trying to catch. They don’t know their target.

There seems to be only one way to turn this around. Take to the streets. Not just bobbies on the beat, but MPs, Ken Livingstone, Gordon Brown. Know your people, know your battle ground. Only then can you regain control of it.

Mitchell Panayis is an East Londoner who recently graduated in Journalism.

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