Post by Hickman on Nov 23, 2005 3:46:32 GMT -5
[shadow=red,left,300]Attention focuses on Somali community[/shadow]
Scotland Yard [glow=red,2,300]"Somali gangs are an acknowledged criminal presence".[/glow]
By John Steele
The disclosure that four of the men arrested for the murder of WPc Beshenivsky were Somalis has inevitably focused attention on their community.
Each new immigrant community entering Britain brings its particular cultural mores and networks. Unfortunately, police have found each attracts and provides a convenient cover for its own criminal fringe.
Somalis have been a quiet, law-abiding presence in London and other port cities such as Liverpool and Cardiff for a century or more. However, this presence has been enlarged to about 200,000 by more recent influxes after the country's civil war of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In 2002, 2,500 Somalis were granted asylum in the UK, one of the largest single ethnic groups. In 2003, some 6,000 applied.
Debate in the Somali community rages around whether those who are applying for asylum are true Somalis or are simply claiming asylum under the banner of their country.
However, Scotland Yard sources who have monitored the influx of new-generation Somalis in recent years say that Somali gangs are "an acknowledged criminal presence". This is said to be true particularly in the west London area around Southall and into the urban areas of Thames Valley.
Like all immigrant communities some of the gang activity is simply aimed at settling imported old scores and preying on their countrymen.
However, it is understood that much of the new Somali gang activity centres on trade in the narcotic Qat, a drug that is legal in the UK but illegal in the US. There has been violence around this drugs trade, police say.
But the Somalis are not regarded as on the same level, for example, as some of the brutal Albanian gangs who have moved across Europe. However, an emerging risk acknowledged by police is the danger of younger, English-speaking criminals in immigrant communities who "mix and match".
In this they would be reflecting a "traditional" British approach to serious and organised crime in
which coalitions and ad-hoc gangs come together for particular crimes or to trade for particular periods in drugs or in illegal commodities.
With four Somalis arrested over the Bradford shootings, it would not surprise detectives in the field to find that gangs were "branching out" into robberies.
news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/22/nwpc122.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/22/ixnewstop.html
Scotland Yard [glow=red,2,300]"Somali gangs are an acknowledged criminal presence".[/glow]
By John Steele
The disclosure that four of the men arrested for the murder of WPc Beshenivsky were Somalis has inevitably focused attention on their community.
Each new immigrant community entering Britain brings its particular cultural mores and networks. Unfortunately, police have found each attracts and provides a convenient cover for its own criminal fringe.
Somalis have been a quiet, law-abiding presence in London and other port cities such as Liverpool and Cardiff for a century or more. However, this presence has been enlarged to about 200,000 by more recent influxes after the country's civil war of the late 1980s and early 1990s.
In 2002, 2,500 Somalis were granted asylum in the UK, one of the largest single ethnic groups. In 2003, some 6,000 applied.
Debate in the Somali community rages around whether those who are applying for asylum are true Somalis or are simply claiming asylum under the banner of their country.
However, Scotland Yard sources who have monitored the influx of new-generation Somalis in recent years say that Somali gangs are "an acknowledged criminal presence". This is said to be true particularly in the west London area around Southall and into the urban areas of Thames Valley.
Like all immigrant communities some of the gang activity is simply aimed at settling imported old scores and preying on their countrymen.
However, it is understood that much of the new Somali gang activity centres on trade in the narcotic Qat, a drug that is legal in the UK but illegal in the US. There has been violence around this drugs trade, police say.
But the Somalis are not regarded as on the same level, for example, as some of the brutal Albanian gangs who have moved across Europe. However, an emerging risk acknowledged by police is the danger of younger, English-speaking criminals in immigrant communities who "mix and match".
In this they would be reflecting a "traditional" British approach to serious and organised crime in
which coalitions and ad-hoc gangs come together for particular crimes or to trade for particular periods in drugs or in illegal commodities.
With four Somalis arrested over the Bradford shootings, it would not surprise detectives in the field to find that gangs were "branching out" into robberies.
news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/11/22/nwpc122.xml&sSheet=/news/2005/11/22/ixnewstop.html