Gangland Britain, From tea and crumpets to guns and grenades… | Street Gangs Resource Center

Gangland Britain, From tea and crumpets to guns and grenades… | Street Gangs Resource Center: "Ten years ago, the idea that the likes of the Bloods, the Crips and the Latin Kings would one day extend their tentacles overseas to the United Kingdom would have been met with scorn and disbelief. Whereas Britain has always had its fair share of criminal activity, there is a clear distinction between organised crime groups and American-style territorial street gangs. The notion that gangsters in the UK would ever identify themselves by wearing a certain colour of clothing would have been laughable prior to the start of the twenty-first century. Fast forward a decade and the streets of London and Manchester are slowly becoming akin to those of Los Angeles and Chicago…
There are now an estimated twenty-five Blood sets and seven Crip sets in the city of London alone and although it would be easy to pass their activities off as a posturing attempt to emulate their transatlantic cousins, they have been responsible for countless murders, robberies and shootings over the last few years. In January 2010, a man was shot in the chest after foolishly attempting to engage in a snowball fight with a member of the E7 Crips in Newham, East London. Later that month, an eighteen-year-old with alleged connections to the Isle of Dogs Gang was stabbed to death by a member of East London’s E3 Bloods. In February, a member of the 031 Bloods was arrested in connection with the murder of sixteen-year-old Oluwaseyi Ogunyemi in Stockwell, South London. These are three of many gang-related killings at the hands of replica Bloods and Crips in England’s capital city."

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