Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Armed officers deployed on Tottenham streets (update: officers now withdrawn).
Following taken from The Guardian;
Police patrols armed
The criminal landscape within a narrow two-mile band of north London, between the Green Lanes area of Haringey and Clapton to the east, has reached a critical stage. A ferocious turf war between Bombacilar and the Tottenham Boys is spiralling out of control.
Three weeks ago the feud's most audacious killing took place. Oktay Erbasli, a prominent member of the Tottenham Boys, was waiting at traffic lights at a busy junction in his Range Rover when a motorcycle pulled alongside. A hitman linked to the Bombacilar gang opened fire, killing the 23-year-old.
Within the tit-for-tat mentality of gangland retribution, reprisals are inevitable. In Erbasli's case it came within 72 hours: Cem Duzgun, 21, had been playing snooker in a Clapton social club with friends when two hooded men approached at 10.50pm and opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon.
For Scotland Yard's senior command, Duzgun's death was the final straw. Something had to give, something drastic was required to tackle the vortex of violence. The decision was taken; for the first time, officers armed with Heckler & Koch semi-automatic sub-machine guns would be deployed on routine patrol on London's streets. They could also have fast motorbikes at their disposal.
The decision, ratified in a recent meeting between Met borough commanders and CO19 senior officers, had followed months of anxious reports from community leaders that their areas were under siege and concerns among senior officers that they risked losing control.
Kavanagh, the officer in charge of policing the area, said the wives of extorted shopkeepers and the girlfriends of gangsters had, for months, pleaded with him to do something; anything to break the cycle of violence. Skirmishes between the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys have seen 11 major shootings since August, all confined to the slender north London corridor between the Green Lanes area of Haringey and Clapton to the east.
Suleyman Ergun, formerly one of Britain's most prominent Turkish criminals, who at the age of 21 became the world's third-biggest heroin dealer before being jailed for 14 years, told the Observer how easy it was for gangs to obtain guns.
Ergun believes that the trade in heroin, traditionally controlled in London by Turkish organised criminals, remains as rife as ever. He said: "You've got the Kurds bringing it over, 10, 15, 20 kilos at a time, and these youngsters are buying it off them and selling it on the street, and that's where the war is coming from.
Widening gang links
One theory behind the surge in shootings points to the power vacuum left in the wake of Ergun's imprisonment and, three years ago, the jailing of Abdullah Baybasin, who was one of the country's most feared criminals and who ruled his £10bn heroin empire with violence and intimidation.
The Turkish 48-year-old, who lived in north London, commanded a gang of foot soldiers who racketeered, imported drugs and instilled fear into London's Turkish and Kurdish communities. His jailing for 22 years destabilised the gangs' natural order, creating a power struggle now filled by the dozens of young men affiliated to the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys.
What added to the decision to use armed patrols was the intelligence that both Turkish groups had forged alliances with some of London's most notorious black gangs, all of whom held a long-standing reputation for violence and the casual use of firearms.
Kavanagh believes that the unprecedented union suggests that the long-standing black gangs of Hackney had joined forces with the Turkish crews to widen their drugs markets and broaden their influence. "The expansion is to do with drugs and violence and kudos and what opportunities they have to support each other. Those bonds are quite chaotic relationships.
Past violence on Green Lanes
Kavanagh is no stranger to the lethal potential of north London's gunmen and the Turkish gangs' propensity for violence. He was the senior investigating officer in the 2002 murder of Alisan Dogan, 43, a cleaner who was caught in the crossfire and died from stab wounds when dozens of criminals staged a running battle in the busy shopping street of Green Lanes. The incident – which left four men with gunshot wounds – is thought to be connected to Turkish organised crime involving the Bombacilars.
Losing respect in gangland Britain these days is, say police, sufficient to ignite long-running feuds. When you lose face in a stand-off between the Bombacilar and the Tottenham Boys, north London's most prominent and feared Turkish crews, the fallout can be fatal.
Be careful on your local high street.
Police patrols armed
The criminal landscape within a narrow two-mile band of north London, between the Green Lanes area of Haringey and Clapton to the east, has reached a critical stage. A ferocious turf war between Bombacilar and the Tottenham Boys is spiralling out of control.
Three weeks ago the feud's most audacious killing took place. Oktay Erbasli, a prominent member of the Tottenham Boys, was waiting at traffic lights at a busy junction in his Range Rover when a motorcycle pulled alongside. A hitman linked to the Bombacilar gang opened fire, killing the 23-year-old.
Within the tit-for-tat mentality of gangland retribution, reprisals are inevitable. In Erbasli's case it came within 72 hours: Cem Duzgun, 21, had been playing snooker in a Clapton social club with friends when two hooded men approached at 10.50pm and opened fire with a semi-automatic weapon.
For Scotland Yard's senior command, Duzgun's death was the final straw. Something had to give, something drastic was required to tackle the vortex of violence. The decision was taken; for the first time, officers armed with Heckler & Koch semi-automatic sub-machine guns would be deployed on routine patrol on London's streets. They could also have fast motorbikes at their disposal.
The decision, ratified in a recent meeting between Met borough commanders and CO19 senior officers, had followed months of anxious reports from community leaders that their areas were under siege and concerns among senior officers that they risked losing control.
Kavanagh, the officer in charge of policing the area, said the wives of extorted shopkeepers and the girlfriends of gangsters had, for months, pleaded with him to do something; anything to break the cycle of violence. Skirmishes between the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys have seen 11 major shootings since August, all confined to the slender north London corridor between the Green Lanes area of Haringey and Clapton to the east.
Suleyman Ergun, formerly one of Britain's most prominent Turkish criminals, who at the age of 21 became the world's third-biggest heroin dealer before being jailed for 14 years, told the Observer how easy it was for gangs to obtain guns.
Ergun believes that the trade in heroin, traditionally controlled in London by Turkish organised criminals, remains as rife as ever. He said: "You've got the Kurds bringing it over, 10, 15, 20 kilos at a time, and these youngsters are buying it off them and selling it on the street, and that's where the war is coming from.
Widening gang links
One theory behind the surge in shootings points to the power vacuum left in the wake of Ergun's imprisonment and, three years ago, the jailing of Abdullah Baybasin, who was one of the country's most feared criminals and who ruled his £10bn heroin empire with violence and intimidation.
The Turkish 48-year-old, who lived in north London, commanded a gang of foot soldiers who racketeered, imported drugs and instilled fear into London's Turkish and Kurdish communities. His jailing for 22 years destabilised the gangs' natural order, creating a power struggle now filled by the dozens of young men affiliated to the Bombacilar and Tottenham Boys.
What added to the decision to use armed patrols was the intelligence that both Turkish groups had forged alliances with some of London's most notorious black gangs, all of whom held a long-standing reputation for violence and the casual use of firearms.
Kavanagh believes that the unprecedented union suggests that the long-standing black gangs of Hackney had joined forces with the Turkish crews to widen their drugs markets and broaden their influence. "The expansion is to do with drugs and violence and kudos and what opportunities they have to support each other. Those bonds are quite chaotic relationships.
Past violence on Green Lanes
Kavanagh is no stranger to the lethal potential of north London's gunmen and the Turkish gangs' propensity for violence. He was the senior investigating officer in the 2002 murder of Alisan Dogan, 43, a cleaner who was caught in the crossfire and died from stab wounds when dozens of criminals staged a running battle in the busy shopping street of Green Lanes. The incident – which left four men with gunshot wounds – is thought to be connected to Turkish organised crime involving the Bombacilars.
Losing respect in gangland Britain these days is, say police, sufficient to ignite long-running feuds. When you lose face in a stand-off between the Bombacilar and the Tottenham Boys, north London's most prominent and feared Turkish crews, the fallout can be fatal.
Be careful on your local high street.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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No, I'm more interested in allowing discussion on this very important issue of the hold over our local High St by corruption and extortion. It's affecting our local shop owners through intimidation and in the end the make-up of our local High St (or Parade). The affects of such crime are in fact wide spread John, as your cricket friend implies.
And btw, not everyone reads The Guardian, which is why the issues raised need wider circulation.
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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The local shop owners are Turkish. Co-incidence? Do you think a Turkish gang member would have much chance of starting this kind of thing on Crouch End Broadway?
Right, change the title of the post and I for one will hassle Hugh to put it in the next update. So many people just read the email, you need to make sure that title is right.
How about: Guardian writing about gang crime in North London?
If they click through and read the whole thing then they get the whole picture, if not then they don't get the FALSE impression that gangs are roaming Green Lanes beating people up. You and I both know that it's a lot safer around here than it is in another country.
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Permalink Reply by John D on
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How can you know that "so many people just read the email and don't click through to the article " ?
If the mail out is censored, what purpose does it serve ?
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Ask Liz, but she knows.
The mailout is from Hugh and Liz, not from HoL contributors. They are free to edit it as to their left leaning woolly liberal tastes (but mostly in the interests of promoting community blah blah) - and so are you should you volunteer to spend several hours a week crafting it. :)
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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John D, can I ask you to read my reply to Matt below and ask you reflect on whether you think censorship is the right term to use here.
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Yes Hugh, I apologise. "Censor " has unpleasant connotations and I would have been better to use " Edit " as you do. I have absolutely no quarrel with the way that you run this board and I have accepted your guidance in the past with, I hope, good grace.
My point to John M was simply that an index or list of contents that is incomplete is failing in its objective.
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Matt, thanks for your comments.
You are quite right, I did omit this posting for the weekly mail and you are already aware of the reasons for that since I have made myself clear in a private message to you.
For the benefit of other members I will explain.
For this site to be effective, one of the things we must ensure is that content published here is true and accurate. Where it is made known to us that something is untrue or misleading we will ask the author to amend it. Where the author declines, we ultimately reserve the right to edit or delete that posting. This is clearly set out in the terms and conditions.
On this occasion. Matt, you reproduced a Guardian article verbatim, except in two respects:
1. The title
2. The addition of a picture
Your title implied that the recent incidents have taken place on Green Lanes which the original article did not do. I have checked with the police and they have confirmed that none of the recent incidents took place in Harringay. The nearest was on West Green Road.
You also added a picture with the title “Green Lanes centre of gang violence.” The picture is neither in the original article nor is it taken in Green Lanes.
I do not want this site knowingly to allow misleading and scaremongering content. There are plenty of other publications out there doing that. So, I wrote to you and asked you to change the title. I also added a comment on this post querying the content.
You chose not to respond, either openly or by message. So I changed the title to that in the original Guardian article. You reverted that change to your original, and the current, title. I was left with four choices:
1. Do nothing
2. Enter into a struggle to change the title.
3. Delete the post.
4. Remove reference to it from the latest activity panel so as to minimise its profile and impact.
I chose the fourth option since at the time I felt it offered the best balance between effectiveness and stoking the issue and giving it even higher prominence.
It appears to have been the wrong decision since, the cats clearly out of the bag on this and members visiting from the weekly mailer will have been able to read the title whether they read the article or not.
In the final analysis, however, this post has been useful since it has helped deepen my thinking on the need for factual accuracy.
As for your comment Matt, “Watch this comment disappear”, it has not disappeared; not one comment has ever been removed from this site for challenging our policies in the two years and more it’s been running. Every challenge or question is responded to with clear reasoning.
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Permalink Reply by Takaokagiejin on
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Thank you for explaining what has happened here Hugh, in my view you have acted correctly and thank you for again keeping the site well managed and effective.
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Thank you for your long reply Hugh. I understand your two points but imho I believe you are splitting hairs on this. I stand by my belief that The Guardian article is extremely important and should be given a higher profile. The article quotes the police involved in the last violent incident on Green Lanes in 2002 and the current situation. The area that these gangs are fighting over for dominance includes Green Lanes. Their activities include extortion from our local shop keepers. We should all be very concerned and that will remain my focus.
This post has thankfully produced some interesting comments on topic which luckily members have been allowed this time to produce in their own time and in their own way.
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Matt I do not have nor have ever had any issue with The Guardian article. What I do not feel comfortable with is subtle but important changes being made to it which mislead members of the site. If you feel that the article is a good piece of journalism, then I urge you to let it stand in its entirety and its original title for this thread and remove the misleading photo.
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I haven't put a caption to the photo. It merely shows CO19 officers which are the taskforce now on our streets.
Let's keep to the discussion.
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Permalink Reply by james walsh on
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Matt.
Lets not confuse the 'murder mile' area of Tottenham N17 with Harringay.
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