Darth Cynic wrote:
Still, it does require going back five years and is hardly the latest outrage of a trigger happy Met hunting down black people to shoot merely because they are black.
For the benefit of people not by the UK, Duggan was a target criminal who was killed by Trident.
Operation Trident, or simply Trident, is a Metropolitan Police Service unit originally set up in 1998 to tackle gun crime and homicide in London's black communities following a series of shootings in the London boroughs of Lambeth and Brent. By 2008 the unit was responsible for investigating all non-fatal shootings for the Metropolitan Police and in February 2012 the unit's remit was again expanded; the new Trident Gang Crime Command was launched incorporating responsibility for tackling wider gang crime.
Trident now mainly goes after gang crime in London, but was originally set up to tackle gun crime in black communities after a series of murders and drive-by shootings during the 1990s. They also had problems in Manchester.
Duggan grew up on the infamous Broadwater Farm in Tottenham, but his family were from Manchester and he was the nephew of crime boss Des Noolan.
It seems the black community never forgets and they are still harping on about racial tensions that date back to the 1970s. Americans will recognize the patterns, you get a disproportionate amount of crime, a hugely disproportionate amount of violent crime, the police try to crack down, largely because it's black people getting killed. Because they are arresting drug addicts who are violently resisting arrest, there are some "deaths in custody", and because they are targeting armed gang members, people get shot and killed. This is followed by riots where they smash up their own communities blaming racism.
The difference is, there was no institutional creation of these ghettos. For the most part there was a white exodus when the crime rates started going up, in some cases whites were forced out with intimidation. It should also be noted that blacks were invited to the UK in 1958 due to a labour shortage, but by the mid 1970s there was mass-unemployment which obviously wasn't just a black problem. Whole communities across the UK were devastated by the closure of factories and coal mines, and although this obviously led to a rise in crime, in most cases it didn't lead to gang warfare and drive-by shootings.
Incidentally, my family are from the area and I have some inside knowledge. Crime and organized crime is not rare. It used to be called "the criminal underworld" because it was beneath the surface. There is a large Jewish community in the area and there is a Jewish mafia. Further East there is an Irish mafia who used to be closely connected with the PIRA. From what I am told the Chinese mafia are incredibly organized and micro-manage much of the community. There also Turks, Iranians, and more recently Eastern Europeans who have a reputation for brutality.
But there is a difference, it is hard to get involved with these gangs, they are secretive and discreet. But with black gangs they recruit children. Girls are gang raped to indoctrinate them and later forced into prostitution. Young boys are tasked with holding drugs, knifes and guns. They are 'jumped in' and have to commit violent crimes as part of their indoctrination.
It's ironic that Ross Kemp goes off to America to make documentaries about this kind of thing when he didn't actually have to leave London.
People are aware of Trident, they are not aware of the work which is done to rehabilitate former gang members, but it seems to me that this is a band-aid. The culture needs to be tackled.
About 10 years ago there was uproar when it was said that gang-rape was a black crime, even though this message originally came from the black community. Likewise, Operation Trident was set up in conjunction with the black community who demanded action because their kids were getting shot. It starts off with "The police aren't doing enough" but somehow the story always gets twisted around to institutional racism.
