How To Rob

Photos by Alex Sturrock

ice: Where are you from? Patrick Johnson: I’m from Kennington Road, Radford. Is there a lot of crime here? Yeah, there’s a lot of crime, mate. Burglaries, street robberies, like stabbings and that—they’re the main crimes, innit? Students and that get robbed a lot. How did you get your black eye? Fighting and that. I got into a fight with a big black guy and a few other guys a week ago, innit? Some guys pulled up in a car and beat me up with a piece of wood. My mate’s a drug dealer and they were after him. He’s got enough money and they came down here to rob him. They couldn’t rob him so they tried to beat me up, innit? They couldn’t rob him ‘cos he’s got back up and shit, innit? This is the most different area; Radford is different from every other area. Us lot don’t give a shit, ya get me? We’re bad, innit? This was Patrick’s friend. He kept this knife in a pile of old wood round the corner from where we met him. What made you bad? I got kicked out of school, yeah. I’d never get a job. What job would you get if you had to had to get one? Don’t know, bricklaying or something. Haven’t the Polish people moved into bricklaying jobs? That’s what we were told by the pub landlord Yeah, fuck the Poles. Well, if I can’t get a job I’ll have to do illegal stuff, innit? Like burglaries and robberies and stuff. This dog belonged to the guy with the bandana on his face. Top. What’s the best place to burgle? Go around a student area like Dunkirk or somewhere. Do you know how many students are around here? You can walk up to a student in the street, yeah, and he will shit his pants. If you go up to him and put an act on like “Yeah, I will hurt you unless I get this off you” they are gonna give it to ya. You can take them to town, yeah, and they will write their pin code in the bank machine and get you £200 out of the bank. That’s how they go on. You can sneak in someone’s house and nick the car keys or something and go take their brand new car. I’m not saying you’ve done it but do you know the best way to burgle a house? You wanna knock on the door, yeah, and look for a house where the lights are out, yeah. You’ll know if it’s a student house ‘cos they’ll have a cloth on the window or something. Then you go up to their house, go and knock on the door or tap on the window. If they don’t answer the first time, bang on it louder, and if they’re not in go round the back and open the little window. If they’ve got double glazing, look around the garden for a spade or something, pop the window off and get in. Go upstairs look in the bedroom and get a laptop, maybe an MP3 player too—all that kind of shit. Sonys and Apple Macs are the best to get—you can get five bills for them probably. What about guns? Are they easily available? You can buy a strap. A keyring gun what you just put together will cost you £100. You can get Berettas for about a grand. You can get shotguns, everything really. If you’ve got money, you can get anything you want.