After Days Of Bloodshed That Turned Kingston Into A Warzone, The World Now Knows The Name Of Fugitive Drugs Kingpin Christopher "Dudus" Coke. Our Author Examines How His Gang Became So Powerful In Jamaica - And Beyond. Kingston residents fear police more than drug dealer Michael 'Dudus' Coke Three men rest at Fishermen Beach in Kingston Photo: AP Ask the people of Tivoli Gardens, Kingston's most notorious "garrison" community, who they consider to be the greatest threat to their wellbeing and the answer is always emphatic: the police. [continues 1587 words]
Drugs Are Big Business in This Notorious Corner of South London. Downgrading Cannabis Didn't Help - Will Zero Tolerance Do Any Better? Tony Thompson reports. Less than a week after a "drug exclusion zone" was introduced, it's all too easy to believe that all the dealers have fled Battersea's notorious Winstanley and York Road estates. This south-London hotchpotch of high-rise, low-rise, flats, maisonettes and town houses - a confusing concrete warren with many dead-ends - seems almost deserted. Despite the area's reputation, most of the deals that take place in public are the result of prior arrangements, and buyers will usually make their way to a specific address in order to pick up their drugs. Dealers' mobile telephone numbers are circulated throughout the drug underworld, and arranging delivery is so straightforward it has been likened to ordering a pizza. [continues 1204 words]
Dope-Smoking Radical Who Wins Unwinnable Cases Loses His Own Fight For any other lawyer, a jail term would mean financial ruin. For Tony Serra the 10-month sentence he starts this weekend for 20 years of tax evasion will be little more than a much-needed rest. With his long silver hair in a ponytail, his tie-dyed shirts and his admission that he smokes cannabis every day, Serra, 72, isn't like most lawyers, yet in a 40-year career he has built an unrivalled reputation of being able to win cases others dismiss as unwinnable. [continues 691 words]
Gangs Make Millions By Targeting London With Cannabis Grown In Houses Rented From Unsuspecting Landlords Police in swaths of London are being 'overwhelmed' by Vietnamese gangs flooding the streets with high-strength, home-grown cannabis. The gangs, who have also been linked to murders, people-smuggling and kidnapping, are making millions of pounds by renting houses from unsuspecting landlords and converting them into sophisticated cannabis farms. Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur, head of the Metropolitan Police Specialist Crime Directorate, told The Observer the problem was now so significant that his officers were working closely with the Vietnamese authorities and community to stamp out the problem. [continues 682 words]
An explosion in the amount of cannabis grown in people's homes has alarmed senior police officers, with some forces reporting a sixfold increase in seizures. Home-grown cannabis now accounts for more than half of all consumption in the UK. While cultivating cannabis is illegal, it is not against the law to buy seeds and growing equipment and business is booming. 'There's no doubt that the market for home-grown has completely exploded,' says Mark Evans, director of internet-based retailer everyonedoesit.com. [continues 658 words]
An explosion in the amount of cannabis grown in people's homes has alarmed senior police officers, with some forces reporting a sixfold increase in seizures. Home-grown cannabis now accounts for more than half of all consumption in the UK. While cultivating cannabis is illegal, it is not against the law to buy seeds and growing equipment and business is booming. 'There's no doubt that the market for home-grown has completely exploded,' says Mark Evans, director of internet-based retailer everyonedoesit.com. [continues 468 words]
Chief Constable Vows To Carry On Fight As Gun Crime And Drug Culture Puts Regional Police Force Under Pressure Police in Nottinghamshire were congratulating themselves last week on the conviction of the man who murdered Andrew Chikiondi Banda, a small-time drug dealer who came to Britain from Malawi in search of a better life. Banda had been sucked into the gangs and guns culture of the city dubbed 'Shottingham' and paid for it with his life. At first glance the conviction looks like a victory for the Nottinghamshire force which, according to its own Chief Constable, Steve Green, is in the middle of a crisis. But for many of his critics it will provide further evidence that he has allowed crime in the city to spiral out of control. In the next few weeks, Green will face a barrage of further criticism, which could seriously undermine his chances of remaining in the post. [continues 840 words]
Thousands of inmates are being beaten, bullied and intimidated by prison gangs which are becoming increasing powerful and violent as the prison population soars, The Observer has found. The gangs are involved in everything from drug trafficking and illegal gambling to assault and murder. Some have become so powerful that members make hundreds of pounds a week from the jail drug trade. This money is put aside for when the prisoners are released or used to provide better treatment inside. Those who fail to pay their debts risk violence against themselves or their families. [continues 539 words]
Bill Burgess is due to sit his GCSEs in June but by then he could be serving hard labour in Ghana It was an offer no teenager could resist: not only would Bill Burgess miss two weeks of school but he would swap the streets of Carlshalton, Surrey for the tropical paradise of Ghana, the jewel of west Africa's Gold Coast. Burgess, a tall, slightly built 15-year-old, had been to Ghana once before, travelling with his brother and sister to visit relatives of his stepfather Victor Gondah. He had been back in England only a few days when Gondah asked Burgess if he would like to accompany him on a business trip back to Ghana. [continues 868 words]
Tony Thompson Follows the Trail As the Heroin Barons of Liverpool Find Rich Pickings in the Bedsits on the South and East Coasts Like most seaside towns in Britain, Great Yarmouth in Norfolk has a promenade lined with brightly coloured hotels and pretty souvenir shops. There is a pier with a video game arcade and topping the bill at the theatre are Cannon and Ball. And, like an increasing number of seaside resorts across the country, Great Yarmouth also has a lucrative drugs market, controlled by gangs from Liverpool. [continues 862 words]
Tony Thompson Reports On The Spiralling Violence Between Rival Drug Lords Which Has Left Three Men Dead and Liverpool Families In Terror In the balmy sunshine of an August afternoon, the Grizedale estate in Everton, north Liverpool, comes across as a perfectly pleasant place to live. The neat rows of terraced two-storey houses are painted in pretty pastel colours, the small gardens are beautifully manicured, there is little graffiti and expensive cars sit in many of the driveways. But appearances can be deceptive. The estate, which sits in one of the most deprived areas in Britain, is at the heart of a vicious gang war which has left at least three men dead and seen dozens of others wounded. At the last count more than 250 of Grizedale's residents - around one in eight of the estate's population - have been arrested for drugs, weapons or violence. Hundreds of weapons have been recovered from the estate including a powerful sniper rifle complete with telescopic sight and ammunition. Despite this the shootings and car bombings have continued, leading local politicians to criticise police tactics and declare the situation to be 'out of control'. With police resources stretched to cover two massive festivals in the city this bank holiday weekend, many residents of north Liverpool fear a new wave of violence over the trade in heroin and crack cocaine. [continues 991 words]
Festival-Goers Are Rejecting Traditional Narcotics In Favour Of New Hallucinogens Such As Salvia and Kratom Tens of thousands of clubbers and festival-goers are turning their backs on traditional narcotics and switching instead to so-called 'legal highs' following the introduction of a number of new products on the market that outshine their predecessors - because they actually appear to work. Packets of dried leaves claiming to provide a marijuana-like high and boxes of tablets that allegedly produce an amphetamine-like buzz have been around for decades but until recently they were generally dismissed as being ineffective. But in recent months new herbs like Salvia, a rare Mexican plant related to sage, and Kratom, an obscure Thai herb, have produced legions of devoted users, many of whom claim they are just as effective as illicit drugs. Business in the multi-million pound legal high trade is now booming with the number of products on offer having quadrupled in the past five years. [continues 778 words]
Once restricted to a black and working-class urban base, crack cocaine is now smoked by people of all backgrounds - and with 45,000 users in London alone, it has become an epidemic, leaving violent crime and shattered lives in its wake. Tony Thompson reports The stocky black man in the heavy trench coat with an orange bandana tied around his head appears for the third time in 20 minutes. His circuit takes him all the way around the base of the four-storey block of flats. Sometimes he lingers at the stairwell; sometimes he spends a few moments lurking in the shadows that hide him from the main road; all the time he is watching. [continues 2722 words]
Increasing numbers of people are becoming dependent on cannabis, The Observer has learnt. Department of Health figures show that drug centres are reporting growing numbers coming to them with problems related to the drug. Nine per cent of all those attending clinics cited cannabis as the main reason they were attending, rather than any of the other drugs they were using, twice as many as a decade ago. With a separate study by the World Health Organisation showing that one in five 15-year-olds in Britain smokes cannabis - more than twice the world average - there is concern that many are becoming addicted to the drug earlier in life. [continues 491 words]
Body Is Found In London Bed-And-Breakfast Two Months After Escape From Prison He owned dozens of properties in Britain, Africa and beyond, fleets of luxury cars and had an estimated UKP10 million stashed away in bank accounts around the world. Drugs baron Roddy McLean, 59, on the run from prison since November, was said to have fled to Mozambique, but last week it emerged that he had died penniless in a dingy South London flat where he worked as a caretaker. [continues 1061 words]
International trafficker found dead in London flat was suspect in gangland killing of Colombian dealer A British woman accused of taking part in a brutal and cold-blooded gangland killing has been found dead in her London home, prompting speculation that she may have been murdered by underworld enemies. Bournemouth-born Beverley Storr, 44, was believed to have been responsible for the death of Colombian drug dealer Arturo Miranda, whose body was pulled from a canal 50 miles north of Copenhagen in January 2001. Miranda, 54, had his hands tied behind his back and his throat was cut. He is believed to have been tortured for hours before he was shot through the back of the head at point-blank range. [continues 810 words]
South African cannabis now dominates illegal trade A new generation of young British drug barons are becoming overnight millionaires by importing high-quality cannabis direct from South Africa. The gangs are taking advantage of the rock-bottom price of the South African product - known locally as dagga - to enjoy profit margins as high as 4,000 per cent and police are warning that those behind the trade could become richer and more powerful than those trafficking cocaine and heroin. Cannabis from South Africa and neighbouring countries is some of the most potent in the world and now accounts for the vast majority of seizures in the UK. [continues 692 words]
Millions Of People Swallowed An 'E' Last Night ... And The Criminal Gangs Behind The Trade Are Counting The Profits This Morning The eight drums impounded at Frankfurt airport were meant to contain acetone bound for a reputable Hamburg chemicals company. The exporter's papers were in order and the customs officials, who had regularly processed similar shipments in the past, saw nothing suspicious. But German intelligence agents had been tracking the consignment for weeks and knew otherwise: the drums contained 452 kgs of piperonyl methylketone (PMK), better known as a synthesised derivative of the sassafras tree whose bark is used to make aromatherapy oils; better known as a banned insecticide in the US; and even better known as the raw material for MDMA, the chemical name for the dance drug ecstasy. [continues 1928 words]
Ecstacy use in the UK has exploded dramatically over the past five years, with double the number of people taking the drug. Ecstasy users are poised to overtake the combined number of heroin and cocaine users. A United Nations report reveals that in Britain 2.2 per cent of the population aged 16 to 59 - 730,000 people - now take ecstasy, compared with 1.2 per cent five years ago. More people take ecstasy as a proportion of the population than in any other country, except Australia and Ireland. [continues 488 words]
Labour Is Not Going Soft On Drug Users, Ministers Insist, As The Police Gain New Search-And-Arrest Powers People who allow cannabis to be smoked at parties at their homes could face a 14-year jail sentence under new laws designed to show that the Government is not going soft on drugs. Ministers have delayed the controversial reclassification of cannabis from Class B to Class C until the end of the year to coincide with the introduction of the harsh new penalties. The move was originally planned for next month, but was postponed after lobbying by police and anti-drug groups, who feared that the Government was sending out the wrong message. [continues 697 words]
