‘A threat to our democracy’ – The Amsterdam Police

 

Amsterdam is home to at least twenty criminal gangs, but the most dominant and the most dangerous are gangsters from Britain. British criminals are considered the number one drug traffickers in Holland, they had been successful at corrupting legitimate business people and as a result were able to money launder extensively. Once laundered this money was then invested in Cannabis farming, by 2009, billions of Euros worth of Cannabis was being grown in Amsterdam, prompting the chief of police to state that ‘Cannabis is a threat to our democracy’.

As a consequence of the significant presence of British criminals in Amsterdam and their drug trafficking operations out of Holland, the Dutch police set up a Joint Investigative Committee (J.I.C). The officers who form part of the J.I.C have been threatened by criminals in the past, therefore they are known by number and not by name. British criminals in Amsterdam are not afraid to go after those who wish to apprehend, arrest and convict them.

As a result of their investigations, the J.I.C had cause to have alot of contact with the London Metropolitan Police, who were conducting their own investigations into seasoned drugs traffickers and drug gangs operating on Britain’s streets.

‘British gangsters in Amsterdam are extremely well organised and far more violent than the Turkish factions have ever been, that is because they are busy expanding their drug trafficking market’ stated a Dutch tactical investigator.

The closeness of the UK to Holland prompted one English contract killer to state that he preferred doing his deals from Holland as opposed to anywhere else in Europe. ‘Holland is an easy place to live ; there are lots of sports going on , so on your day off you can go rally driving or scuba diving or take a martial arts class, I got into all three whilst I was over there’. He embarked upon a career as a contract killer in England at the age of fourteen, when he executed a Turkish drug boss, and he went on to commit several more contract killings, three of them taking place in Amsterdam.

The degree of co-operation between the British Serious Organised Crime Squad & British police forces & the Dutch J.I.C has had a significant and a positive impact on policing operations in Britain and Amsterdam. But it is worth noting that if not for the European Protocols none of this effective cooperation would be in place.

Co-Morbidity

 

In the land of the blind the one eyed man is king

According to SAMHSA’s 2014 National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) (PDF | 3.4 MB) an estimated 43.6 million (18.1%) Americans ages 18 and up experienced some form of mental illness. In the past year, 20.2 million adults (8.4%) had a substance use disorder. Of these, 7.9 million people had both a mental disorder and substance use disorder, also known as co-occurring mental and substance use disorders.Various mental and substance use disorders have prevalence rates that differ by gender, age, race, and ethnicity. 

Those are the American figures, now take a look at some British ones, in 2014/15 there were 8,149 hospital admissions of drug related mental health and behavioural disorders that’s 14% higher than the previous year. There were also 14,279 hospital admissions for poisoning as a consequence of drug use, that’s 57% up on 2003/4. 

24% of those arrested by police for assault later tested positive for drugs, in 12% of those cases the drug of choice was cannabis. More British people than ever are taking drugs but to all intents and purposes we’re not addicted, even with a surge in drug abuse brought on by a recession, austerity and economic uncertainty. Despite this lack of addiction there’s been an increase in comorbidity ( mental illness coinciding with drug use), an increase in drug driving, and an increase in assaults (how many of those involved in the perpetration of knife & gun crime would have been found to have used drugs if they’d been caught at the scene?).

There’s been an increase in parents attending their own children’s funerals, an increase in police attending teenage crimes scenes, an increase in community concerns about the increasingly violent ways in which teenage members of their communities are meeting their end. The only thing that hasn’t increased is governmental concern about what’s going on, the kind of concern that could lead to an increase not a decrease in policing numbers and police budgets. British police have form when it comes to targeting big time drug dealers and the havoc and mayhem they create in Britain’s cities. Out of control children (black and white) are running around with guns and knives and pockets stuffed full of cash and besides being bemused, the government has cut policing budgets time and again and chosen to do nothing.

The stats on Cannabis farms make for astounding reading, that’s thousands of suburban terraced homes in which plants and not people are being housed. The police used to raid thousands of these properties a year, returning the homes to estate agents who could then arrange for them to be filled by real people with real housing needs. However, the number of cannabis farm raids has dropped, the reason? A cut in policing manpower and budgets.

Tied to the issue of cannabis farms is modern slavery, the enslaving of homeless people for the sole purpose of cultivating the cannabis crop. According to Teresa May (she who has declared Eritrea a ‘safe haven’ for returning refugees) ‘Britain leads the world in its efforts to tackle modern slavery’ but not it would seem in eradicating homelessness or cannabis farming. 

The Police Took Care Of The Blues, But What Is The Government Aiming To Do About The Reds?

05/00, KOMBRA DIVAKAREN, 43, LONDON

Died of head injuries two days after being attacked and abused by a gang attempting to steal from his shop. In January 2001, a 16-year-old girl and 20-year-old man were sentenced to five years. Two others were found guilty of affray.

06/00, GLYNNE AGARD, 34, WESTBURY, WILTSHIRE

On a night out with his brother, Stephen and friend Gary Belgrave, were attacked by a gang of eight who kicked and punched Glynne to death. In July 2001, Wayne King was jailed for four years after pleading guilty to manslaughter. A 21-year-old was jailed for four years for ABH. The judge said the murder was not racially motivated.

/01, GIAN SINGH NAGRA, 37, ELM PARK, LONDON

Found with serious head injuries after suspected racial attack, died later in hospital. In August 2001, Matthew Dorrian admitted manslaughter.

03/01, FETAH MARKU, 24, EDGWARE, LONDON

This Kosovan asylum seeker was beaten to death by a gang of men following an argument in a pub in Edgware, north London. Fetah suffered eighty injuries, twenty-nine of which were from sharp instruments. In June 2002, Richard Ellis, a Black man, was found guilty of his murder. The judge commented it was unlikely he was ‘solely responsible’. Ellis denied knowing any of the 20-30 strong gang that beat Fetah to death. In April 2007, Ellis was told that he must serve at least 11 years for the racially motivated attack before he could seek parole.

04/01, SHIBLU RAHMAN, 34, BOW, EAST LONDON

Stabbed to death by a gang of White youth as he returned home from work. In November 2001, a 15-year-old boy was found guilty of murder. Two others were convicted of manslaughter and a 16-year-old was convicted of perverting the course of justice. Police said the murder was ‘purely’ racial.

07/01, SHARON BUBB, 30, BOW, EAST LONDON

Tortured and had her throat cut by 26-year-old Scottish man George McMaster. He was jailed for life after admitting her manslaughter on grounds of diminished responsibility. When arrested he said ‘It was because she was Black’.

05/02, FRANKIE KYRIACOU, 19, KENTISH TOWN, LONDON

A young Turkish-Cypriot died two hours after being stabbed outside his home. In 2002, John Geaney was found guilty and sentenced to life imprisonment. The court was told how Geaney had wanted a fight and had stood outside the home of Frankie Kyriacou goading the young man and his brother. When they emerged from the house, the two were stabbed. Though Geaney had been heard making disparaging comments about Turkish people, the judge ruled that the attack was not racially motivated. In May 2007, Geaney was sentenced to serve at least 12 years.

10/02, DERRICK SHAW, 21, REDHILL, SURREY

Died five days after being fatally brain damaged after he was punched to the ground in a racist attack outside a take-away. 26-year-old James Green was charged with manslaughter and racially aggravated grevious bodily harm and threatening behaviour. The trial in June 2003 heard that Green, who was trained in martial arts, had been ‘fired up for a fight’ and had made racist comments. The jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision and Green, who denied the charges and claimed he acted in self-defence, was ordered to face a retrial. In December 2003, Green walked free from court after a second jury failed to agree a verdict.

National Action (UK) (2013)

National Action is a neo-Nazi, British nationalist youth organisation that has been proscribed as a terrorist entity, by the Government of the United Kingdom. The group is secretive, and has rules to prevent members from talking openly about the organisation.The group was proscribed in the UK on 16 December 2016. In March 2017, an undercover investigation by ITV found that its members were still meeting in secret.

Due to the secretive nature of National Action, it is not clear who the leader of the organisation is. Former National Front member Ashley Benn (pseudonym Tommy Johnson) has been referred to as the organisation’s leader, and is thought to be one of a number of activists behind National Action’s founding document.

In an investigation by the Daily Mirror, Benjamin Raymond, age 25 in June 2014, was found to be the leader of National Action. He is a former double-glazing salesman who graduated with a degree in Politics from Essex University in 2013. By 2014, he had written on his blog: “There are non-whites and Jews in my country who all need to be exterminated. As a teenager, Mein Kampf changed my life. I am not ashamed to say I love Hitler.”He has expressed admiration for Anders Breivik, the far-right terrorist, who is “the hero Norway deserves”. Raymond told BBC News in 2015: “The source of all of the conflict in society is all the different racial groups that have been brought here.

National Action self-styles itself as a “revolutionary nationalist” organisation which grew out of a failed offshoot within the youth wing of the British National Party and has made effective, large-scale use of social media and blogging platforms.

National Action also wanted to reintroduce Section 28, which prohibited the “promotion of homosexuality” in schools. On immigration, “Tom” says “With coloured people we’d say big no to them coming over. But with [white people] we’d be a bit more lenient”.

The group has distributed its material on at least 12 university campuses. In an interview with The National Student, an anonymous organiser for National Action explained why they target universities: “very soon they are going to find out just how hard the system has screwed them – if they knew what we know now we would have an army.

In November 2016, The Sunday Times reported that National Action was supporting Thomas Mair, the murderer of the Batley and Spen Labour MP Jo Cox, posting “only 649 MPs to go!” on social media. National Action also supported Mair personally, saying “don’t let this man’s sacrifice go in vain” and altered its listing on Google to state: “Death to traitors, freedom for Britain!”, a slogan Mair had said to a court when asked to give his name following Cox’s murder. The organisation also supported the Orlando gun homicide and has called for graphic and violent attacks on police officers in the UK. Mair, however, appeared to have little involvement with National Action or any other white nationalist groups within the UK.

 04/03, PAUL ROSENBERG, 56, ISLE OF WIGHT

A South African taxi-driver working in the Isle of Wight was attacked and stamped to death by a passenger. Paul was a South African who arrived in the UK in 1951 and moved to the Isle of Wight in 1996 or 1997. The court was told that passenger Arnold punched Paul twelve times with ‘severe force’ before stealing his cash bag containing £300. Wendy Nolan, a friend of Arnold’s, told the court that Arnold told her: ‘I think I have killed the bloke. I only did it because he is Black. He looked dead. I think he’s dead. I kicked him.’ She, in turn, was so disturbed by what she had been told that she drove to where Arnold told her the attack took place and found Paul’s body. Paramedics were called and battled for 20 minutes to save him before he was declared dead. In May 2004, Arnold was sentenced to life for his murder and ordered that he serve a minimum of 11 years and 341 days. Det. Insp. Jason Hogg commented: ‘We are very pleased with the verdict. We feel justice has been done. This was a dreadful attack, made particularly horrible by the fact that there was a racist element.’ In April 2005, after an appeal, Arnold’s minimum tariff was reduced to just under 10 years.

05/03, JOHNNY DELANEY, 14, ELLESMERE PORT, LIVERPOOL

Johnny, who was from a Traveller family, was found with serious head injuries in a field and later died in hospital. In November 2003, the trial began at Chester Crown Court of two 16-year old boys charged with murder. One of the boys was allegedly heard to say that Johnny deserved it because ‘he was only a f**king Gypsy’. The two boys, who tried to blame one another, were found not guilty of murder, but guilty of manslaughter. The Judge, Mr Justice Richards, told the court he did not believe the attack was racially motivated. However, the police said after the verdict that the murder had been investigated as racially motivated because of the use of racist language. Johnny’s father, Patrick Delaney, commented, ‘There is no justice here. They were kicking my son like a football. Are they going to let this happen to another Gypsy?.. As far as we’re concerned it was a racist attack.’

06/03, AWAIS ALAM, 45, LEYTON, NORTH-EAST LONDON

This father of three was attacked by two White men on the busy Walthamstow High Street and later died. He allegedly confronted the men after they made racist comments. They then knocked him down and kicked him as he lay on the ground. Police were treating the attack as racially motivated.

11/03, QUADIR AHMED, 59, RUISLIP, WEST LONDON

An Indian restaurant owner died nearly a month after suffering head injuries in a racist attack outside his restaurant in Eastcote Village near Ruislip, west London. In September 2004, 19-year-old Daniel Palmer was jailed for life for Quadir’s murder. The court was told that Palmer and his gang had been throwing eggs at the Zhai restaurant on Halloween night and Quadir and his brother came out to remonstrate with the gang. Palmer attacked him with an estate agent’s ‘for sale’ sign. The gang were heard mimicking Asian accents and Palmer ran off laughing, boasting that he had broken Quadir’s nose. Palmer was sentenced to a minimum of twelve years.

04/04, AKBERALI TAYABALI MOHAMEDALLY, 80, NORTHOLT, WEST LONDON

An elderly Pakistani man was attacked at the White Hart roundabout subway in Northolt, west London, and taken to hospital where he was pronounced dead. Police said they were treating the attack as racially motivated. Two youths were arrested and one was later charged with his murder. Michael Evans, 17, and James Carney, 20, were convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to ten years each.

05/04, BAPISHANKAR KATHIRGAMANATHAN, 24, ASHFORD, KENT

A Sri Lankan-born restaurant worker died two weeks after being racially attacked in Ashford, Kent. Bapishankar suffered serious head injuries after he and a friend were racially attacked on a footbridge in Victoria Road on 22 April 2001. Two men, James Rossiter, 22, and Tony Pile, 18, were charged with murder and remanded into custody. In July 2004, the men were convicted and sentenced to a minimum of 25 years. In October 2005, the Court of Appeal reduced the sentences from 25 years to 21 years, saying that the trial judges failed to take into account the men’s ages and that the reduction did not diminish the ‘horrific’ crime.

05/06, HAMIDULLAH HAMIDI, 31, LONDON

Two shop workers were injured in a racist firebomb attack on their shop in Kennington, south London. Khizar Hyat died after being trapped in his shop. His colleague died in hospital nearly a month later from injuries sustained during the arson attack. On 4 May 2006, 32-year-old Robert Torto appeared before Greenwich magistrates charged with murder. In July 2007, a judge ordered that he be detained at Broadmoor Hospital indefinitely after he pleaded guilty to three counts of arson with intent to endanger life on the grounds of diminished responsibility. He also pleaded guilty to a further count of arson at a Tulse Hill newsagent. Judge Peter Beaumont ordered Torto be detained for an indefinite period. Police officers found a handwritten note detailing different bombs and targets, including gay clubs, hospitals carrying out sex changes and non-Christian religious institutions.

07/06, CHANGEZ ARIF, 33, MANCHESTER

Changez was found stabbed to death in an alleyway near his home in Cheetham Hill, Manchester. Police ruled out racial motivation saying the attack was a revenge attack. In January 2007, Michael Skeffington, 19, was sentenced to life imprisonment with a recommendation that he serve 15 years for stabbing Changez five times in revenge after losing a fight. The case was only allowed to be reported in July 2007 after Skeffington pleaded guilty to another assault along with his twin brother David following an attack on another Asian – again involving a knife. In September 2003, Skeffington had been given a two-year ASBO by Manchester magistrates after being accused of racist behaviour which banned him from entering an area of Cheetham Hill.

Combat 18 (1992)

Combat 18 (C18) is a neo-Nazi cartel associated with the Blood and Honour organisation, based on the principles of “leaderless resistance”, a strategy that was adopted and mentioned in the Combat 18 manifest, based on “The Turner Diaries”, written by William Luther Pierce under the pseudonym Andrew Macdonald. It originated in the United Kingdom, with ties to movements in the United States and has since spread to other countries. Combat 18 members have been suspected in numerous deaths of immigrants, non-whites, and other C18 members. The 18 in its name is derived from the initials of Adolf Hitler: A and H are the first and eighth letters of the Latin alphabet. Members in the United Kingdom are barred from joining the British Prison Service and police.

Between 1998 and 2000, dozens of Combat 18 members in the UK were arrested on various charges during dawn raids by the police. These raids were part of several operations conducted by Scotland Yard in co-operation with MI5. Those arrested included Steve and Bill Sargent (brothers of Charlie Sargent), David Myatt and two serving British soldiers, Darren Theron (Parachute Regiment) and Carl Wilson.

05/07, TARSEN NAHAR, 44, WEST LONDON

Tarsen Nahar, (aka ‘Cookie’), was found dead in Hayes on 19 May 2007. Daryl O’Connor, 18, was found guilty of murder and of aggravated bodily harm. The court was told in an unprovoked attack, O’Connor and his friends had been heard to say ‘We don’t like n*****s in our park’. O’Connor, who was 17 at the time of the murder, is said to have beaten Tarsen to the ground and then kicked him in the head, as the gang stole his phone and wallet. Tarsen was able to make his way to a friend’s house where he collapsed. Local police said the murder was investigated as racially motivated and that O’Connor was initially charged with racially aggravated ABH (as well as murder), however the ‘racially aggravated’ rider was dropped. In July 2008 O’Connor was sentenced to life imprisonment with a minimum of 13 years. (Read an IRR News story: ‘Convictions in three Black murder cases’)

06/08, HAMIDA BEGUM, 71 AND ALANA MIAN, 4, GREAT LEVER, BOLTON

A grandmother and her granddaughter died in an arson attack when a wheelie bin was set alight outside a house in Bolton. Saima Mian, who was visiting her parents in the UK from Australia, was seriously injured in the fire, suffering burns to her face and stomach. Fire fighters suggested the fire was deliberately set. A reconstruction on BBC Crimewatch, in January 2010 where police officers suggested the motive was racist, resulted in new leads.

08/08, NILANTHAN MOORTHY, 17, CROYDON

A young Sri Lankan student was stabbed to death following an altercation in a Croydon street with 31-year-old Steven Braithwaite. Nilanthan, a little drunk after celebrating the birthday of a friend in Croydon, started arguments with passers-by. Brathwaite passed by in a taxi and was heard to racially abuse the group, calling out ‘P**is’, Nilanthan, upset by the abuse attempted (but failed) to pull Braithwaite from his cab. Twenty minutes later, Braithwaite returned and resumed the argument with Nilanthan, stabbing him in the neck. Nilanthan died at the scene. In June 2009, Braithwaite was found guilty and sentenced to life for murder and ordered to serve a minimum of 19 years.

 09/09, EKRAM HAQUE, 67, TOOTING, SOUTH LONDON

This retired man died a week after being attacked by a Black gang outside his local mosque after evening prayers. He suffered head injuries in the attack (which is thought to have been racist).His 3-year-old granddaughter who was with him at the time of the attack was unharmed. Three young people aged 14 and 15 have been charged with GBH with intent and murder. And a 12-year-old has been charged with conspiracy to commit GBH and two counts of assault. The attack followed other assaults on elderly Asians near the mosque.

05/10, MARCIN BILASZEWSKI, 19, WOOD GREEN, LONDON

A Polish teenager died after being stabbed outside Finsbury park tube station. His attacker, Alphonse Kruizinga, was said to be racist towards Polish people in particular and blamed Poland for the Second World War. He was cleared of murder but convicted of manslaughter and sentenced to five years.

07/10 KESTER DAVID, 53, PALMERS GREEN, NORTH LONDON

A bus driver, who was found burned to death under railway arches at Palmers Green underground station. An initial Metropolitan police investigation recorded the death as suicide. However David’s family believes that he may have been murdered because he was a police informer. The family also had concerns that the police failed to conduct a proper investigation because he was black. A first internal police report found ‘a failing in duty’ by the police and found a vast array of errors in the original investigation. David’s family further complained that no disciplinary action was taken against the police officers found to be at fault.

12/10 INDERJIT SINGH, 36, BEDFORD

Singh, of Indian origin, was stabbed to death on Christmas morning by BNP supporter, David Folley. Singh had mistakenly knocked on Folley’s door while looking for a friend’s address and was stabbed to death on the landing. David Folley, 35, was sentenced to life imprisonment. He was also found guilty of ABH for assaulting another man in prison while awaiting trial.

 10/13 JOELE LEOTTA, 20, MAIDSTONE, KENT

This Italian man had been in the UK about a week when he was killed. The attack happened in a flat above a restaurant where Joele was working. According to an Italian mayor, ’informed sources’ said that the attackers had ‘broken down the door of their room’, yelling, ‘you’re stealing our jobs’. The police later denied any racial motivation. In January 2014, four Lithuanian men charged with murder pleaded not guilty.

BNP Greenwich

The British National Party (BNP) (1982)

is a far-right political party in the United Kingdom. It is headquartered in Wigton, Cumbria, and its current leader is Adam Walker. It currently has one councillor in UK local government. During its heyday in the 2000s, it had over fifty seats in local government, two seats on the London Assembly, and two Members of the European Parliament.

Ideologically positioned on the extreme or far-right of British politics, the BNP has been characterised as fascist or neo-fascist by political scientists. Under Tyndall’s leadership, it was more specifically regarded as Neo-Nazi. The party is ethnic nationalist, and espouses the view that only white people should be citizens of the United Kingdom. It calls for an end to non-white migration into the UK and the removal of settled non-white populations from the country. Initially, it called for the compulsory expulsion of non-whites, although it has since advocated voluntary removals with financial incentives. It promotes biological racism and the white genocide conspiracy theory, calling for global racial separatism and condemning mixed race relationships. Under Tyndall, the BNP emphasised anti-semitism and Holocaust denial, although Griffin switched the party’s focus on to Islamophobia. It promotes economic protectionism, Euroscepticism, and a transformation away from liberal democracy, while its social policies oppose feminism, LGBT rights, and societal permissiveness.

Policing: ill Health versus Capability Dismissal

As a Federation rep I have had the responsibility of representing and advising officers on ill health retirement and appeals processes. My usual advice to officers wanting to seek ill health retirement is this;

Your chances of success are low. Around about 25% presently. There is little point trying for an ill health retirement pension unless you have tried every possible treatment available for your condition, in order to be considered as permanently disabled,even if your own GP or Consultant hasn’t recommended or even offered the treatment. Because you can guarantee the SMP or Appeal board will deny you are permanently disabled without having tried it. 

Even having exhausted every possible pill, experimental therapy and ancient tribal medicine from the far reaches of Peru, your chances of being deemed as having a permanent disability and therefore eligible for ill health retirement, are still only as good as a flutter on a roulette wheel.

Capability Dismissal is now being pitched as a tool that will be used on the ‘minority of officers’, to plug a gap that exists where officers are not eligible for ill health retirement. It is being claimed that only a mere fraction of disabled officers will be affected.

This I am sure, is said with absolute belief in this statement, however, unless the ill health pension implications above are fully understood, reviewed and rectified, this will absolutely not be the case. In fact, there is potential in the future for this to apply to the ‘vast majority’ of disabled officers.

If ill health retirement rates remain at approximately 25% success rate (PFEW estimations), the other 75% of officers who are unsuccessful will surely be walking the lonely trail into the deep dark depths of dismissal from the Police service. It is not inconceivable that 100% of those officers will be disabled.

Our focus must now turn to the second half of the Limited Duties regulations, Capability Dismissal.

This is where the real threat lies to Disabled Officers. At least with an ‘X factor’ pay reduction, ‘they’ only manage to chew off a small piece, but you still manage to get away to fight another day. You will still have a job. It may require some very tough lifestyle changes, but for most it will be achievable.

Capability Dismissal on the other hand would see you dismissed from your force on the grounds of your ‘capability’ to perform the role of the office of Constable, having not been eligible for ill health retirement.

If ill health retirement isn’t addressed soon, Capability dismissal won’t just chew a piece off, it will swallow you whole.

Extracted in part from a blog posted by the Disabled Police Association National Secretary

Reasons Not To Privatize The Feds: Part Two

Going Country

More and more, city gangs are sending young runners out into the sticks to sell crack and heroin. We spoke to dealers, sex workers and police to get a better understanding of how the whole thing works.

As commuters arrive into Britain’s major cities from their homes in the shires, a different kind of commuter is travelling the opposite direction. They’re more likely to be young and wearing trainers, tracksuits and puffer jackets. Most of them generate more cash each day than their city-bound counterparts. The tools of their trade are a cheap mobile phone, a bag of class A drugs and a knife.

Last week, the National Crime Agency released its second report into the growing phenomenon known as “going country” – city drug gangs sending young runners to sell crack and heroin in market or coastal towns. The report found that these were no occasional day trips: over 180 urban drug dealing gangs have expanded into the jurisdictions of three quarters of British police forces.

Going country, or “OT” (out there), is not an entirely new phenomenon. Gangs from the big four UK drug hubs – London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool – have been sending dealers to sell in less crowded areas since the rise of the highly profitable crack selling business, and of mobile phones, in the 1990s. The drug trade in Ipswich, Suffolk, for example, has been dominated by London gangs since 2003.

 Yet, in the last decade, across Britain the trickle has turned into a flood. Using motorways and trains, city gangs have expanded their reach far and wide, beyond the commuter belt, from Devon and Gloucestershire to Humberside and Scotland. London gangs – the most prolific of them all – have taken over the trade across the south of England: in west country towns such as Swindon, Melksham, Aylesbury, Bournemouth and Yeovil; in southern towns such as Hastings, Eastbourne, Worthing, Tunbridge Wells, Margate and Brighton; and in the east, in Colchester, Cambridge, Norwich, Leiston and Bury St Edmonds.

What’s more, the dealers are getting younger, with children as young as 11 being found selling drugs in areas a world away from the inner city zones they call home. Meanwhile, as the newcomers increasingly discard the old school criminal code of local drug markets, rivalry, enmity and violence intensifies.

Despite recent police and media reports about this phenomenon, little is known about how these gangs operate and the impact they have on “host” towns. In truth, it’s a story about a collision point: where people’s desperation to escape poverty and pain meets head-on with the cold, hard economics of the drug trade.

G4s have demonstrated to the general public just how adept they are at managing national events and the probation service, they clearly aren’t. So where would they find the money for the kind of policing work that throws up this research data? Policing cuts have consequences.

Reasons Not To Privatize The Feds: Part One

A Heathrow airport drug smuggling racket importing more than £10million of cocaine into Britain was smashed following a series of dawn raids today.

The drugs, which also included 50 kilos of cannabis, was shipped into the UK in 15 months through the UK’s biggest airport.

Eleven suspects, including one woman and three baggage handlers, were arrested at addresses in and around London and the south east.

Today’s operation follows a number of seizures of drugs at Heathrow over a 15 month period – totalling around 100 kilograms of cocaine and 50 kilograms of cannabis.

The drugs are believed to have been sent by drugs lords based in Brazil for gangs selling on the streets of London. Please note, that these are not necessarily Afro-Carribean gangs, a number of ethnicities (Brazillian, Angolan, Columbian, Dominican,Polish, Romanian,Russian) are now a part of settled communities in London and have been for many years.

Those arrested are aged between 24 and 60 and were detained following the series of coordinated raids involving around 125 investigators from the National Crime Agency.

The operation NCA were assisted by officers from three police forces including the Metropolitan Police.

The suspected drugs ring members were arrested on suspicion of conspiring to import class A drugs and are now being questioned at police stations around London.

The suspects are either linked to the South Americans in the drugs trade or ‘wholesalers’ based in London.  

G4S never stops talking about the money it can save police services but how many plain clothes hours inside & outside of London went into the preparation for this police operation? The face of London has changed, to discover to what extent & make all the necessary links between Columbian criminals & those indigenous to London costs patience, time & wages? Cuts have consequences.

Bernie Sanders, Native Americans say oil pipeline will poison drinking water

WASHINGTON — Sen. Bernie Sanders called on President Obama to take action against the controversial Dakota Access oil pipeline during a protest outside the White House on Tuesday with members of the Standing Rock Sioux Tribe and other tribal nations.

The Vermont independent is seeking a full environmental and cultural impact analysis of the four-state, $3.8 billion project, designed to carry crude oil from North Dakota to Illinois. Federal officials last week temporarily halted part of the project, but Sanders wants the administration to go further, saying the pipeline threatens the environment and water resources and exploits Native Americans.

Protesters say the pipeline’s route under the Missouri River will endanger the water supply and sacred sites of the Sioux reservation located on the North Dakota-South Dakota border. A thorough analysis, Sanders said, will ultimately kill the pipeline.

“We cannot allow our drinking water to be poisoned so that a handful of fossil fuel companies can make even more in profits,” the former Democratic presidential candidate told the cheering crowd, estimated at 3,000 by organizers. “We stand united in saying, ‘Stop the pipeline, respect Native American rights and let us move forward to transform our energy system away from fossil fuels.”

The protest was one of about 200 “#NoDAPL” events Tuesday, mostly in the United States, according to the environmental group 350.org. 

It followed Tuesday’s release of an internal memo from Energy Transfer Partners, the company building the Dakota Access pipeline, saying concerns about the pipeline’s impact on the water supply are “unfounded.” Kelcy Warren, the company’s chairman and CEO, also wrote that multiple archaeological studies conducted with state historic preservation offices found no sacred items along the route.

Ranby jail reduces population after inspectors’ warning over ‘legal highs’

Emergency action has been taken to reduce the population of a Nottinghamshire jail by 120 inmates because it was in danger of being overwhelmed by a destabilising surge in the supply of “legal highs”.

The immediate temporary reduction in the 1,000-strong population in HMP Ranby followed a warning during an official inspection of the jail during August and September last year where many of the men are serving long sentences for serious offences.

Martin Lomas, the deputy chief inspector of prisons, recommended the emergency action saying staff at the jail needed to regroup in the face of a surge in the availability of new psychoactive substances – legal highs – in the jail and because it was struggling to cope with its dual roles as a working and resettlement prison.

Nearly 60% of prisoners told the inspectors that it was easy to get drugs inside the jail: “Health services were at risk of being overwhelmed by the need to treat the most seriously affected,” said the inspectors in their report on Ranby published on Thursday.

“As we walked round the prison, we saw a number of prisoners who were clearly under the influence of new psychoactive substances; some had been left with other prisoners to check they did not deteriorate because there was no available health care services or other staff to do so. In addition to the health consequences, the trade in new psychoactive substances was leading to high levels of debt and associated violence.”

The inspectors say that the drugs problem at the jail was on top of “an already dangerous mix” of high levels of frustration caused by the lack of work in some of the workshops which meant too many inmates had too little to do and were bored.

They found that safety was a major concern with a much higher than normal level of violent incidents: “In one incident, a group of prisoners muscled into a wing office to take back a ‘throw-over’ package of drugs that had just been intercepted by staff,” the inspectors report. There had been four self-inflicted deaths at the jail since April and a further death which is being treated as homicide, they added.

An extract from the full article which may be read in The Guardian 2015

Tony Blair admits he is baffled by rise of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn

Tony Blair has said he is struggling to understand the appeal of Democratic candidate Bernie Sanders and Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn because both are hampered by “the question of electability”.

The former British prime minister, a supporter of Hillary Clinton, admitted that he is finding it hard to grasp popular movements in both Britain and the USfavouring mavericks who will “rattle the cage” and which reflect a loss of faith in the progressive centre.

In a joint interview with the Guardian and the Financial Times in Washington, he emphasised that Americans must make their own decision but made clear his scepticism about Sanders, the leftwing senator whose challenge to wealthy eliteshas energised young supporters.

“It’s very similar to the pitch of Jeremy Corbyn,” Blair said. “Free tuition fees: well, that’s great, but someone’s going to have pay for it. An end to war, but there are wars.” But not wars with quite the ramifications of the Iraq war eh Tony?

Rob the poor and give to the rich – housing policy for 2016

This afternoon, MPs will vote on a proposed law. As a bit of policy, it is as belligerently incoherent as a drunk at 2am. As a piece of politics, it will harm millions of people, while making one of the gravest crises facing our country even worse. Yet I’m fairly sure this piece will be one of the few across the press and the BBC even to discuss it.

Granted, the housing and planning bill can never outdo the excitement surrounding the ups and downs of Hilary Benn, the new Mr Darcy of every wet-eyed columnist. But the UK housing market is a catastrophe so dire that it causes even Manhattanites to marvel. A recent Guardian interactive makes the point: any would-be homebuyer earning the national average of £26,500 will now find 91% of England and Wales beyond their reach. If you can’t buy, you rent – except in London, the epicentre of the madness where rents are so extortionate, newspapers compete for horror stories. Considerthe £480 a month charged for a mattress in the corner of a communal lounge in a shed in the east end.

You don’t need me to lather on facts and figures. Anyone trying to get a toehold in the housing market, or whose children are, already knows how badly broken it is – and grasps the implications. How it gouges money from those who don’t own only to put it in the pockets of those who do. How it forces anyone from outside London either to accept that they won’t be able to pursue a modestly paying career there – or will have to grind out at least a decade of expensive squalor to do so. And how that makes the UK both more unjust and economically weaker.

David Cameron knows all this. He even makes speeches about how homes in Britain are unaffordable to Britons. The bill in front of MPs is meant to free up social housing for those most in need and to make land and funds available for builders to churn out more private homes. In reality, it will make private homes even more unaffordable while cutting further the stock of homes available below market rent.

Look at the axe the government is taking to social housing. Before the 2010 general election, Cameron promised to “support” social housing while his soon-to-be ministers pledged to “protect social tenants’ rights and rents”. Now he’s phasing out secure tenancies for those same tenants. A couple living in a council home who earn a total of £30,000 a year (£40,000 within London) – that is, just above minimum wage – will be moved up to market rents. The Treasury will also force local authorities to flog “high value” homes once a family moves out. That spells the end for council housing in central London – specialists estimate that 60% of Camden’s housing stock and 70% of Islington’s would qualify as “high value”.

Couple it with what’s already happening in the private rental market – where poorer families are being pushed out to London’s perimeter, and you have a charter for turning the centre of the city into a rich-only enclave.

If this sounds like the sort of post-adolescent fantasy that would be sketched out in some Westminster thinktank, that’s because it is. Many of these policies have been lifted from the rightwing Policy Exchange. Until 2014 its former housing specialist, Alex Morton, churned out pamphlets such as Ending Expensive Social Tenancies, notably mainly for their flush-cheeked libertarianism, casual dismissal of the rights of those not on stellar incomes, and subheadings such as “Most people actually support forcing people to move from expensive properties”.

For such Rolls-Royce thinking, Morton is now paid somewhere between £53,000 and £69,999 of taxpayers’ money as a special adviser to the prime minister on housing policy – one of Cameron’s fleet of advisers whose salaries cost the public over £9m a year.

But what sounds good at a conference fringe meeting doesn’t always translate into robust law, and the housing bill has more holes than all the golf courses in suburbia. Try this: the household income assessment of council tenants will be based on the previous year’s earnings. So a family could go through redundancy, divorce or even death and still be forced to cough up “market rents”. Or this: the amount a council is meant to net from the sale of a publicly owned home will be set not by local surveyors, but by Treasury officials. Or this: although the bill’s fixed-term tenancies are aimed at making social housing more flexible, it provides no viable mechanism for evicting antisocial tenants before the term is up.

These are just some of the howlers in a document drafted by the Department for Communities and Local Government – the bit of Whitehall that will be almost obliterated in the spending cuts. As housing lawyer Giles Peaker says: “I seriously wonder who’s left in DCLG who actually understands housing law.”

The contradictions gape wider and wider. The government that plans to make more use of limited council housing also wants to sell council housing. The ministers who want to make work pay will also make work cost more for council tenants. The administration that think these changes are excellent for half the social-rented sector now won’t apply them to the other half – housing associations – on anything more than a voluntary basis.

Cameron’s big solution to the housing shortage is to invent a new category, “starter homes”, and encourage developers to build them. Developers building homes at up to £450,000 in London and £250,000 in the rest of England will be able to claim them under the rules as “affordable”. As the housing charity Shelter points out, to buy a starter home in the capital by 2020 will require an annual income of £77,000 and a deposit of £98,000. That makes them unaffordable to all but the richest third of Londoners.

Excerpt from an article written by Aditya Chakraboty in The Independent January 2016