Jamaican gunmen behind shocking London crime wave

By JASON BENNETTO

LONDON - The nightclubbers were queuing on the pavement outside Chicago's club on Tuesday when two men armed with automatic pistols opened fire from across the street.

A spray of bullets hit the screaming group and, seconds later, nine people lay bleeding in the road: three males and six females, among them a 15-year-old girl.

It was the kind of indiscriminate shooting we have learned to associate with America's most violent neighbourhoods - places like south central Los Angeles and the Bronx in New York - or even downtown Kingston, Jamaica.

But this week's bloody attack took place in Peckham, southeast London - just up the road from leafy, middle-class Dulwich. The gunmen are believed to have been targeting a rival drug dealer, who just happened to be standing among a group of innocent bystanders. Witnesses say it is a miracle no one was killed.

Meneliek Robinson was not so lucky when he was ambushed at the wheel of his BMW just over a month ago. Four men on two motorbikes blocked in the 20-year-old as he was driving along the Upper Clapton Rd, across the river in Hackney.

One of the pillion passengers climbed from his bike, walked to the driver's side, and fired twice through the window. Though he was bleeding heavily, Robinson managed to stagger free from the car, but collapsed on the pavement. The gunman strode over to his victim and shot him again from point-blank range, to make sure he never got up.

What these two incidents have in common is a new, cold-blooded ruthlessness and a willingness to resort immediately to the rule of the gun which is shocking even in the context of London's criminal underworld.

It is these traits, combined with bitter rivalries between black drug gangs, that has characterised the explosion of violence seen on the streets of the capital in the past two years.

Since the beginning of 1999 there have been an extraordinary 29 drug-related murders involving black-on-black attacks in London. In addition there have been 23 other non-fatal shootings - many of them botched murder attempts - in the past seven months alone.

The shootings have been concentrated in Brixton in south London, Harlesden in the northwest and Dalston to the east of the city - areas which have long been familiar with drug-related crime.

But what makes this round of killings different from previous inter-gang feuds is the involvement and influence of the infamous Jamaican "Yardie" gunmen.

These notorious criminals honed their skills, and their shocking disregard for human life, during the murderous political battles fought out on the Caribbean island in the 1970s and early 1980s.

After the 1981 election campaign, in which 600 people died, the Jamaican police cracked down on these gangsters - and many were forced to emigrate. Some went to Miami and Los Angeles, others wound up in New York and Toronto, and a handful made it to London. Others dug in and sat tight among the feared Kingston slums of Trenchton and Tivoli.

In Jamaica, the gun gangs are known as "Posses," each with its own nickname. The "Yardies" tag - which some claim was coined by a London drugs officer - comes from the phrase "Yard," or "Back Yard," which is what expatriate Jamaicans call the island home. The term "Yard" is also used by Jamaicans to describe their local neighbourhood.

The threat posed by Yardie gangsters was first recognised in Britain in the late 1980s, but after a rash of scare stories and the failure of the predicted crack-cocaine epidemic to materialise, the problem appeared to have been solved by the mid-1990s. But that was before the present killing spree.

Crack, the highly addictive cocaine-derivative that provides an intense but short high, is back in vogue - and the profits to be made from the trade in the drug have attracted many black, British-born criminals to the Yardie image of fast cars, designer clothes and guns as "fashion accessories."

In an effort to counter the growing influence of the Yardie gangs and the rise in black-on-black shootings, Scotland Yard last month stepped up its on-going investigation, codenamed Operation Trident, with the formation of a 160-strong squad of elite detectives backed by a trendy new logo and an advertising campaign.

What detectives have discovered is that while most of the shootings have been carried out by black British criminals involved in drug dealing, it is the rise in the use of Yardie gunmen, brought into the country to order, which is most to be feared.

Operation Trident officers claim to have intercepted known Yardie killers "every two or three months" as they try to enter Britain to carry out a contract killing. The hitmen are paid as little as £500 ($1565) for their work and their paymasters in Britain provide safe houses with details of the target.

As Commander Mike Fuller, head of Operation Trident, explains: "You are talking about people from absolute poverty who have killed before. The legal penalty they face is the death penalty, so you are talking about people with nothing to lose. "

"These people are not paid that much," he adds. "Five hundred quid is the lowest I've heard. But £1000 is a lot of money if you are coming from downtown Kingston."

If detectives get wind that a suspected Yardie hitman is on his way to Britain, they will try to intercept him as he arrives and "disrupt his activities" - police-speak for "frighten the killer so that he does not return."

Just why the police are so concerned about the devastating impact of these imported Jamaican killers was graphically illustrated by the case of Hyrone Hart, aged 28, and Kurt Roberts, 19. Along with seven other Yardies, the pair entered Britain illegally in 1998 and, during a five-week crime spree, killed and raped and robbed their way through London.

Last December the two were jailed for life for shooting dead Avril Johnson, 30, at her home in south London in July 1998. They were also found guilty of the attempted murder of Johnson's husband, Kirdk, who escaped by playing dead when a bullet meant for him missed by centimetres. The couple's daughters, aged 7 and 1, were pushed under a mattress during the shooting.

Hart and Roberts were described as being part of an "execution squad" who carried out violent robberies against suspected drug dealers and rich black people.

- INDEPENDENT