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Eight years after 11-year-old Rhys Jones was killed by a stray bullet from a revolver held by 16-year-old Croxteth Crew member Sean Mercer, police pledged a massive crackdown, but gang-banging among the youth of Merseyside has continued. These gangs aren't sophisticated organized crime syndicates, but loose networks of low-level criminals who graduate from anti-social behavior to fatal violence simply because they can access firearms so easily.Gang members start as pint-sized "grafters," some as young as 13, earning cash by growing cannabis crops in rented houses, protecting their "grows" against armed raids from rival gangs, or selling "lemo"—Scouse slang for cocaine—along with ketamine and ecstasy pills."It's like a war is going off on the streets," says one 17-year-old gang member, describing an ongoing feud between two factions from an estate dubbed "Dodge City" in Netherton and nearby Fernhill."Lads have been shot, stabbed, chopped up, had their houses petrol-bombed, got snatched or got a hiding. There's been a longstanding rivalry between Dodge and Fernhill, but this war is something else. It's mainly over crops in Bootle… who controls what. You've got grows getting robbed and growers getting turned over. At the minute lads are being kidnapped most days. Ransom demands are being made—anything from £500 to £10,000 [$760 to $15,200]. It's all about control. Sometimes you'll see lads from rival firms get kidnapped for nothing—just to wind them up.There are kids of 14 carrying guns. It's madness.
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