AT ABOUT 8pm on Wednesday August 23 last year, Liam Smith, a teenager with
short cropped hair and piercing blue eyes, emerged from a visit to Altcourse
prison in Liverpool. He was only a short stroll from the prison when an
assailant emerged from some bushes, walked towards Smith and shot him in the
head with a sawn-off shotgun.
Three hours later, Smith - known as “Smigger” to his friends - was pronounced
dead at a nearby hospital.
He was a victim of a four-year bloody feud between two gangs of youths in
Liverpool’s eastern suburbs - the Croxteth Crew and the Strand Gang, also
known as the Crocky Eds and the Nogzy Eds.
Smith, 19, was said to be the acknowledged leader of the Strand Gang, the name
given to a group of youths who live on the rundown Norris Green estate.
Early last week lamp-posts on the estate were being adorned with flowers in
Smith’s memory.
But among some in the community there was foreboding over the approaching
anniversary of the death of a man described by his friends as a “true Nogzy
soldier”. One person, who has close connections to gangs in the area,
claimed last week he was told that a shooting was being planned on the rival
gang’s patch in Croxteth.
He said: “I personally took it on myself to phone the police. I’ve never done
it before. I said that something is being planned, a weapon has been
acquired and that they should be on the lookout for two specific cars.”
Merseyside police said this weekend they were aware of community concerns
about possible violent reprisals over Smith’s death but they deny receiving
any specific intelligence. They said patrols were increased in the Norris
Green and Croxteth areas.
On the same Wednesday evening, 11-year-old Rhys Jones, a devoted Everton fan
with an affable manner and engaging smile, was walking back to his home in
Croxteth Park with two friends after a football training session. Like most
young football fans, his mind was probably on that night’s Eng-land-Germany
match.
His life was a world away from the one of fear, posturing and reprisals that
Smith had inhabited and he was unlikely to be concerned if he saw the quiet
hooded figure who appeared on a BMX a short distance away. Just five minutes
and he would be home.
The young cyclist, wearing dark clothes and white trainers, raised a handgun,
according to witnesses, and fired three shots. Nearby was a group of three
youths that police believe may have been the intended target. There was the
sound of a car window being blown out by one of the rounds. Rhys crumpled to
the ground. It looked as though he had slipped over, according to his
football coach, Steve Geoghegan, one of the first on the scene. But blood
was seeping from the boy’s neck and he was slipping into unconsciousness.
Rhys’s mother, Melanie Jones, 41, was collected from her home and found her
son lying in a pool of blood. She cradled him in her arms as his life ebbed
away. Rhys never regained consciousness. He was pronounced dead that
evening.
Along with the grief there was bewilderment and revulsion at those who had
claimed Rhys’s life. “He doesn’t know what a gang is and he’s never been in
some sort of gang,” said Rhys’s father, Stephen. “He hangs around with his
mates and plays football.”
Police said there was no firm evidence linking Rhys’s death with Smith’s
almost exactly a year before, but it presented a “strong line of inquiry”.
Whatever details emerge about the reasons for the killing, few in Rhys’s
neighbourhood doubt that he was an innocent victim of the gang culture that
blights so many of Britain’s most deprived communities.
Eight children have died this year in England and Wales after being shot, with
Jones being the youngest victim. A 12-year-old girl was shot dead in
Manchester in May and the six other victims, all teenagers, died in
shootings in London.
Gordon Brown last week called Rhys’s death a “heinous” crime and promised new
laws to tackle the problem. David Cam-eron, the Tory leader, said it
symbolised social breakdown.
The housing estate where Rhys was gunned down appears an incongruous setting
for the gangs’ bloody warfare. Croxteth Park, the second largest private
housing estate in Europe, is largely comprised of Persimmon and Barrett
homes, which fetch up to £250,000 each, with neatly cut lawns, polished cars
on the driveways and quiet cul-de-sacs. It is surrounded by parkland.
But to the northwest, beyond the grassland and trees, lies the urban decay of
the Croxteth estate; and beyond that lies Norris Park. These two sprawling,
shuttered estates were built in the heyday of Britain’s manufacturing
industry, but have long since fallen into decline.
The two groups of youths on the estates — once said to belong to one large,
loosely affiliated gang — have considered themselves at war for at least
four years. Croxteth Park was one of their battlegrounds.
One of the flashpoints in this futile and protracted conflict was a fatal
shooting on New Year’s Day 2004. Danny McDonald, who was then said to be the
leader of the Croxteth crew, was shot dead by a masked gunman who walked
into the pub where he was drinking. Ever since McDonald’s death, the gangs
have engaged in tit-for-tat reprisals. Both gangs take mobile phone footage
of their illegal exploits and weaponry, including rifles, handguns and
knuckle dusters. It often surfaces on the internet site YouTube.
The two gangs, almost exclusively made up of white youths, are said to be run
on similar lines. Members as young as 10 act as scouts, carrying out
reconnaissance on police movements and rival gang members.
The senior members of the gang are aged 16-20. They are sometimes armed,
usually with small handguns, and expected to carry out “punishment
shootings” where victims are hit in the leg or hand. Fatal shootings are
rare, with McDonald and Smith the only two gang members who have been
murdered.
One former Croxteth Crew member said: “This has nothing to do with drug
dealing or crime, though that does go on. It’s all about respect. People
have been squaring up recently. There’s been a lot of tension and people
preparing for a battle.”
Another gang member, who claims to be a rival “Nogzy soldier”, said in an
interview this weekend: “It’s not a nice thing to be into, fighting and
shooting and that. But that’s it. It can be fists or with knives, whatever
someone prefers.
“I suppose my preferred tool would be a gun. I don’t have one but I could get
one if I wanted to. You can get a gun practically anywhere here, in a shop,
in a news-agent’s even. It’s so easy - Mach 10s, Mach 11s, they would
probably cost us up to £400.”
Since the beginning of 2004, the two gangs, which are said to have about 20
“core” members each, fired shots at each other on 17 occasions. In June 2005
a number of youths were shot near the Fir Tree Bar, almost exactly where
Rhys was killed.
In 2006 the battle between the gangs escalated. In February a 15-year-old boy
was shot in the leg in Norris Green by a gunman riding a bicycle. Two months
later, homes in Norris Green were sprayed with gunfire in a drive-by
shooting.
Last week three teenagers from the Croxteth area were convicted of Smith’s
murder. A fourth was found guilty of manslaughter and a fifth found guilty
of helping the killers.
Merseyside police have worked hard to disrupt the gang culture. Two years ago
they set up Operation Matrix and a team of 200 officers was reassigned to
deal with gun crime. The operation, led by Bernard Hogan-Howe, the chief
constable, has been credited with a 38% fall in firearms offences.
Police attempts to investigate crimes, however, have been hampered by a code
of silence between gangs and witnesses terrified of reprisals. Even last week
after Rhys’s death, there was reluctance among many people to come forward.
Hogan-Howe said that during the last spate of teenager shootings in London and
Manchester earlier this year he warned a Downing Street gun summit that
“unless something was done we’d have another body in a morgue”.
He proposed that the Serious and Organised Crime Agency should be given the
task of stemming gun supply. He said a duty should be placed on everybody
who had information on gun crime to tell the police. A similar law is in
place in Australia.
He also said families who failed to inform the police if children were
involved with guns should be moved away so a “good culture” could survive.
“Frankly, not an awful lot of progress has been made,” said Hogan-Howe
yesterday.
There is also frustration among residents of Croxteth Park that more action
has not been taken to protect them. They have been lobbying for a staffed
police installation, known as a “pod”, but were told resources were not
available.
Dave Saville, 42, chairman of the Croxteth Country Park Residents’
Association, said: “There is no way someone would have taken a gun out if
there was either a pod or a security camera there.”
There were further shots fired elsewhere in the city last night. In Tuebrook,
Liverpool, two miles from Croxteth Park, police cordoned off a street after
a bullet was fired through a window. Meanwhile, a 13-year-old boy was in a
stable condition in hospital in Manchester after being shot by an airgun in
the Hulme area of the city.
Professor Chris Lewis, a former chief statistician with the Home Office and an
expert on gun crime, said those who got sucked into gun culture came mostly
from broken homes.
“Their backgrounds tend to be miserable. They are subject to violence
themselves and their families are perhaps not the best.
“They find it easy to slip into a criminal fraternity. There’s instant
gratification and there’s money to be made from drugs.”
Lewis says “99%” of the cases he looked at involved people who got involved in
the drug trade. “You can only buy and sell them with cash. When money is
being carried around you need to have protection, so guns became
instrumental in protecting and in threatening people.”
Another problem is the availability of weapons on the black market. In a Home
Office study last December, Lewis and two colleagues found that prices
varied from £150-£200 for a gun known to have been used in a crime, to
£1,000-£1,4000 for a new 9mm model.
Estimates of the numbers of illegal weapons circulating in Britain run as high
as 4m.
Ministers deny such claims, insisting that Britain is becoming a less violent
society. But the gun crime debate seems mired in half-truths and confusion.
Last week Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, said overall crime had fallen by a
third since Labour came to power. She cited figures from last month’s
British Crime Survey that purport to show gun crime fell in England and
Wales by 13% to 9,608 incidents in the year to April 2007. That is the
lowest figure for seven years.
A more revealing picture can be found in the Home Office’s annual statistical
bulletin, published in January. This shows the number of crimes recorded by
police in England and Wales in which firearms caused death or injury. The
statistics show that the scale of death and injuries caused by “real” guns
(excluding air weapons) has risen significantly under Labour, from 864 in
1998-99 to 3,821 in 2005-6.
As the Home Office bulletin puts it: “The number of firearm crimes [including
air weapons] which resulted in injuries has more than doubled in seven
years: from 2,378 in 1998-99 to 5001 in 2005-6. This entire rise comes from
nonair weapon offences resulting in injuries, which have risen more than
fourfold in that time.”
David Davis, the shadow home secretary, and other MPs say the figures make a
nonsense of government claims that “real gun crime” is falling. He has
written to Smith saying her claims are “inaccurate and misleading”.
Camila Batmanghelidjh, of the charity Kids Company, which supports vulnerable
inner-city children, said: “Powerless children will seek out power. If they
can’t find success in legitimate structures, they will turn to alternatives.
These children need very powerful leadership in child protection, combined
with real investment.”
Whatever policies are proposed by Brown’s government, their efforts will
forever be driven by the memory of Rhys, who should have been starting at
secondary school next month.
His father Stephen said: “I went to his room where he should be asleep, opened
his wardrobe; his school uniform that we had bought for senior school, his
pens and pencils, are there unopened.His calculator is there unopened, his
shoes are still in the box, his trainers are still in the box. It’s just
horrific, your worst nightmare.”
Additional reporting: Holly Watt, Philip Cardy, Laura Pitel and Alan Schofield
"Tough on crime, tough on the causes of crime"
Not in the slightest.
Matt, Telford,
I so agree with Edwina Rigby - excellent. Government - present and future - have some guts; back the police 100% and give them considerably more resources, eg manpower, authority, and money.
PAT APLIN, Dorchester, Dorset
This government's "solution" to any problem is simply to lie to the public and "show" with false, manipulated or selective figures that the problem is being solved. How much longer can Great Britain survive this incompetent, cowardly and untruthful government? If Labour is voted in again in the forthcoming elections, whether they be this year or in 3 years time, I give up all hope. They say a country gets the government it deserves.
Richard, Alicante, Spain
What a bloody farce. The Police have abandoned all responsibilty,the politicians are craven cowards,authority is set at naught.
GO IN to these rat holes,extract ALL known trouble makers,break up the gang culture, get these children disciplined,organised, and made to understand that enough is enough.
It can be done,it takes manpower,money and effort,but if the will is there,it can be done.
Let's spend some of the billions wasted in Iraq on war prevention in our own backyard.
If politicians don't understand what has to be done here, we are going to reap a fearful whirlwind.
Edwina Rigby, Blackburn, England
If this report is accurate clearly this was a crime waiting to happen. What are the police doing? They have information and know these gangs operate on a basic level as in reprisal attacks on anniversaries etc so why are they not vigilant and making their presence more obvious in such places. I live in a very nice part of my town but am well aware of the Asian fraternity dealing in drugs and guns a short drive from my area...it is common knowledge and the fact these people live in modest homes even council type homes yet drive around in Bentley convertibles and only deal in cash for everything must surely give us an indication that things are not quite right?
jane, Preston,