With institutionalised racism at an all-time high, the Metropolitan Police embark on their yearly drive to recruit more ethnic people in the police force. With little or no success they bring over Jamaica's most feared policeman - Scotland Yardie, a ganja smoking, no-nonsense bad boy cop who breaks all the rules to enforce his own harsh sense of justice. But what happens when cultures clash? Will South London ever be the same again?
This book critiques the concepts of cultural functionalism and biologised ethnicity. The chapters examine ethnicities in conflict across Europe, and have been selected on the grounds that they not only provide a rich ethnographic account of overt ethnic conflict or racial violence, but also relate these local situations to wider processes. The contributors do not put forward a single homogeneous point of view, but they all assume perspectives that are opposed to the prevalent simplistic primordialism of most media coverage and political analysis. Most of the contributors are anthropologists and have presented drafts of their chapters at a series of meetings organised by a network called the Forum Against Violence. Many of the articles have appeared previously in the International Journal on Minority and Group Rights (Volume 4). This book should be of interest to academics and practitioners in the fields of human rights, anthropology and related topics.
In Making Trouble, leading scholars in criminology, sociology, criminal justice, womens studies, and social history explore the mediated cultural dynamics that govern image construction and understanding of a wide range of contemporary controversies (for instance, drug dealing, freight train graffi ti, anti-abortion violence, etc.). Edited within unifying central themes such as "situated media"; the evolution of policing and social control; and the gendered construction of crime, deviance, and control, Making Trouble marks a signifi cant expansion within this field.
Although organised criminal groups have been an ever-present menace to our cities, in the last decade gangs have snowballed into one of the most terrifying problems facing Britain today. Seducing disillusioned youngsters into their ranks, vicious crews have declared open war in a desperate attempt to gain control of the lucrative drug trade...murder, kidnapping and intimidation have become all too common.In south Manchester, the feud between the Gooch Gang and the Doddingtons became so vicious that peace-keepers from America's Crips and Bloods were flown in from Los Angeles to broker a deal. Across the United States, the Crips now boast some 35,000 members from all ethnic backgrounds - African-American, Caucasian, Hispanic and Asian - while the Bloods have made an alliance with the old-time Lucchese crime family, once one of the 'Five Families' of New York and still a pillar of the Cosa Nostra.
An unprecedented investigation into the shocking realities of gun crime on Britain's streets, "Guns and Gangs" lifts the lid on a hugely important modern-day problem - an expensive problem both in terms of money and young lives. After terrorism, the single greatest worry for law enforcement agencies is gun crime, and in particular 'black on black' shootings. McLagan has had exclusive access to police files and case histories. Alongside his findings from these records are interviews with police officers, victims and their families, witnesses, lawyers and perpetrators of gun crime. The result is a unique, fascinating and horrifying expose of the disturbing truth behind this plague on our streets.
In 2004, the murder of a middle-aged couple in their village bungalow lifted the lid on the great untold story of British organised crime. The slaughter of Joan and John Stirland revealed an evil empire of powerful ganglords, contract killings and police corruption. At its dark heart was the East Midlands city of Nottingham. A prosperous centre of business, education and leisure, Nottingham had fallen under the shadow of vicious gangsters. Eventually its police were investigating so many murders that their boss had to appeal to other forces for help, and the influx of drugs and weapons saw the city labelled "Gun Capital UK". HOODS traces the roots of the gangs, revealing how economic dislocation and the clash of cultures between working-class white residents and black immigrants from the 1950s onwards created an alienated underclass. In the 1990s, a more malignant breed of organised criminal emerged. Crime families who had been involved in armed robbery, protection rackets and extortion now sought to control the recreational drugs trade and forged links across Europe to import wholesale quantities of cocaine, ecstasy and amphetamines. By 2002, shootings were running at one a week. HOODS uncovers how outlaw Yardies pioneered the sale of crack cocaine and imported the ruthless violence of the Jamaican ghettos; how young black gangs from the so-called NG Triangle of the Meadows, St Ann’s and Radford areas clashed in a series of turf wars; how the shadowy Dawes Cartel built a lucrative international drugs empire; and how the Bestwood Cartel and its terrifying leader, Colin Gunn, corrupted police officers and left dead and maimed in its wake. As local police struggled to cope with the mayhem, MI5 and the National Crime Squad launched a massive undercover investigation into the Nottingham ‘untouchables’. It led ultimately to the dismantling of some of the UK’s most powerful crime networks. HOODS is a stark account of what happens when the rule of the gun supplants the rule of law and fear stalks the streets.
