Drugs, gangs and police corruption in Stoke Newington: An Interview with an ex gang-member on Stokey's underworld

Last March a friend of mine came to visit from Yorkshire.

Before she arrived she asked me anxiously whether Hackney deserved its

reputation for being a dangerous place. Instinctively I jumped to its defence,

telling her the image was over-hyped, that there was hardly ever any trouble

and she’d love it down here in the ‘ghetto’. So down she came, for just the one

night. We had a fantastic time partying on Church Street and come 5am we made

our way home for some much needed sleep. Upon reaching the end of my road we

were greeted with whirring blue lights (thankfully my friend was so drunk she

thought it was another disco) and police tape. My street was closed off because

Hackney had suffered its first of two teenage fatalities for 2010, upholding

its rep as a troubled borough (my mate went home unconvinced of my claims). It

was the death of 17 year old Godwin Lawson and the serious injury of brothers

Daniel and Julian Borja as the three walked down Amhurst Park in the early

hours last March. A year on there is still speculation surrounding the motive

for the attack – some say it was unprovoked and others believe it to be turf

related (the boys were living in Enfield and venturing into Stamford Hill, and Julian

was carrying a weapon himself – although he didn’t use it). Four youths are

currently standing trial on charges of murder, attempted murder and wounding

with intent.

And 2011 seems to be continuing the trend as two youths have

been seriously injured in a stabbing on Stoke Newington High Street within the

first full week of the year. Much of the violence amongst the teenage community

in Stokey – and across the rest of the capital – is blamed on gang activity and

drug culture. But what’s the real story? I speak to ex gang member Jamie*

about the realities of Stokey’s urban underworld as we talk drugs, police

corruption and the 2012 Olympics.

How involved were you

in all this?

Yeah, I was pretty involved, I’ll be honest. It got heavy at

times, and bad. It got really bad.  I got

dragged into things I’m not proud of, but I learnt my mistakes young enough

that I can turn things around now.

And in your

experience, what drives gang culture in Stoke Newington?

No one’s in a gang for the sake of being in a gang, let’s just

get that out of the way. You grow up broke, you want to get money. You’ve got

things in your face: nice clothes, nice cars, whatever; you want that. In Stoke

Newington that’s the biggest factor: the mixing of cultures means that everyone

wants to be street but also to live that plush lifestyle. Who’s not going to

aspire to something better once they’ve seen it? Down Clapton they don’t give a

**** – they love the blocks; they love jamming in a big group. If all you know

is **** then that’s all you’re going to aspire to. With Stoke Newington it’s

different because you’ve got the middle classes on your doorstep. Certain of

your friends will be middle class. It’s like a melting pot – everyone’s kind of

like halfway between Heaven and Hell; we’re more trying to strive to create

that “American dream” lifestyle.

And what about the

protection element?

There is that factor as well: growing up in Hackney ,

naturally you need protection from a young age – you’re being tested all the

time and there’s no escape from it. Being part of a gang or being known is your

protection. Your reputation is a part of gang life, but that’s not what drives

people forward on it. No one really wants that – if you could get the money

aspect without having to go through all the beef and the drama and the fights

and all that **** then you would.

And how serious is

the link with drugs? Is that just a myth of the movies and Louis Theroux

documentaries?

In Stoke Newington the gang culture is all about the money,

so it’s all about the drugs. Every Tom, Dick and Harry wants to be Scarface and

in Stoke Newington there’s enough of a market for everyone to feed off and

still make money - everyone knows you can move more cocaine here than you can

in Clapton. Kids grow up around here shotting [selling] weed; by the time

they’re old enough to drink in pubs they’re shotting coke.

How do they get involved

so young?

Everyone wants to sit back early, right? So from the time

you’re making enough money from drugs on a daily basis it’s like any other

business – you start paying someone else to do it. You start paying a young kid

who’s like 15 who, if he does get caught by the feds with a couple bags on him,

they can’t do nothing to him anyway coz he’s underage; you think these kids

don’t know this? That was the crucial ages, that’s when you made the most

money! 

Some of the police in

the area say that the gang world has been cleaned up in Stoke Newington and

that particular old-school gangs (name removed for safety reasons) don’t pose a threat anymore. How realistic

is this? Have they genuinely clamped down?

The feds are naïve: the people on the streets realise how

smart the feds can be, but the feds don’t realise how smart the people on the

street can be. So if the feds have got this in their mind – if this gang apparently

don’t exist anymore – then it just takes the heat off them if you think about it.

There was a couple years ago when they did clamp down, I’m

not gonna lie. I was involved at that time and they made it hard for people to

breathe. It’s all a clean up for 2012 [London Olympics] – they can’t let people

from all over the world come to this ****hole, that’s the way they’re looking

at it. It’s why Shoreditch has moved to Dalston and Dalston has moved to

Clapton. A lot of people who would never otherwise be eligible [for crime

related transfers] have been getting moved out to Enfield, Watford, all these

surrounding places: because it’s a clean up for East London – trying to make

the streets middle class. But all they did was make the people who were left

step up their game. You take out one group of guys you make way for the new

generation coming up, and they’re coming up already, before you clamp down. They

can’t get rid of the problem like that; not as effectively as they think. They

may have clamped down on more little crimes but it’s not really a significant

dent they’ve made.

And what’s the

attitude of the police at Stoke Newington, in your experience?

You always get the one out of ten officer that does his job

because he wants to make the streets a safer place and really gives a ****

about what he’s doing. But then you’ve got the other ones who try and pick

fights and whatnot, who try and antagonise people into doing things so that

they can arrest them. That’s not policing, that’s not protecting the community,

that’s just trying to get your stripes up and get your Sarg-badge.  

And their reputation

in relation to drugs and corruption? Is it justified?

Police don’t get paid a great wage to do their job,

depending on what level they’re at, so it’s only realistic. People like to say

it’s a bit of a myth that the “Stokey-Cokey” police here are bent: no, they’re

bent, I’m sorry. They are the reason that some of this **** is on the streets.

It’s their way of taxing it – they take it off this person, they turn that much

back out and put the rest behind the desk and call it a seizure. That’s the way

it works. I will tell you right now, that that ‘myth’ about feds being bent is

not a myth.

There are so many kids out there who get arrested for one

thing and they get years, and then there’s people that you know keep getting

arrested and they don’t do enough time for what they’ve done. Don’t ever get it

twisted, the feds take certain kids, or certain men, put them back out on the

streets so they can do their work for them. And there are people with feds on

the pay roll.

And looking at the

statistics of teenage murders in the capital last year, how do you feel?

19? It’s not nice that someone’s being murdered every few

weeks in London, but London’s a big place. I would expect it to be a lot more

in a way, but then there are a lot of people who have been an inch away from

death than those who have actually died which is just as bad in my eyes.

And is this a threat

to the innocent citizen or does it stay within its own world?

Just like any other culture you’ve got good people and bad

people. The majority of these kids are doing what they have to do to make

dough. And in some cases, yeah, some of the people that are being killed may

not be the bad, bad people.

… But are they

involved?

People look at it as, y’know, if the person was involved

then it was their fault, like they deserved it… how involved do you need to be to

have deserved it? You could be involved to the point of – like one of the kids

that’s been killed here in the past couple of years – that you knew everyone in

your area, you grew up with them, they were your friends, you used to ride BMXs

with them and all that; you might have not been dealing any drugs yourself, but

you was hanging out with them at the time that these people came and done

whatever. You got caught in the crossfire.  People are guilty by association, like that

girl in Hoxton who was literally just in the wrong place at the wrong the time

and had spoken to the wrong people. How involved do you really need to be for

you to deserve to have your life taken? So if you’re asking me about these

kids: were they involved or anything, I can’t say how involved they were, but

it doesn’t matter.

Okay, so what do we

do about the problem?

You can’t stop kids from shotting. We need to school kids in

how to do what they’re doing – if they’re gonna do it – in a more sensible way.

And that’s what a lot of them are learning: kids are less reckless these days.

Before, we were proper reckless; how many people still get mugged for their

phones and **** like that these days? Back in the day when we were growing up

people were getting mugged left right and centre, you could have a career off

that, just literally mugging people for their phones. Nowadays there’s no money

in that, with all the technology you can’t unblock phones and they’re worth

nothing after you’ve robbed them. I don’t see these kids doing as much harm to

innocent people. It’s getting better. It can still be a dirty game, but not

many people are in it for that. And I think the media does need to recognise

that there are a lot of kids out there who are doing the right thing, too.

Well the murder rate

in London, and particularly Stoke Newington has gone down in 2010 despite still

being high. Do you predict that reduction will continue in 2011?

I don’t see much changing. If it goes down this year it

might go up to twenty next year, it’s not like a set path. It just means less

people were hot headed that year, or a lot more people got lucky and survived.

Watch this space... to follow in a few weeks will be an interview with a local police officer on the same topic.

*Names have been changed to protect identity

Photo courtesy of freefotouk at Flickr