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SOCIAL EXCLUSION
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BIASED POLICING
THE COCAINE ROUTE
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A former heroin and crack dealerI was selling heroin and crack on my estate in Tooting from the age of 11 to 20. I've been in prison six times, the longest stretch was five years. I got out and I'm now studying a sociology and economics degree at university.Yes, there is institutional racism in the police, in courts and prisons—and black people selling drugs can be obvious—but for me it's all about social deprivation. If you took away drug dealing you would literally have young black kids starving in the streets. They need the money.If the police want to find us, we are easily found. We are not in central London; we are living in these little urban pockets, living on top of each other in neglected estates. Drug dealing has spiraled out of all this. All the drug addicts live on the same estate as us, so it's easy to make money selling drugs to them.I got into dealing because my parents were drug dealers—it was my destiny to sell drugs. My dad wasn't around much. Mothers can teach you manners, but not how to be a man. We just went out on the streets and did anything we wanted because no one was going to say anything. We didn't care if we got caught and went to prison. We just did it again straight away—it was the only thing we knew.
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Former international cocaine traffickerIf you see someone who has managed to afford a car from his earnings in a week, rather than over two years, people are going to go for the job that takes them a week to get the car.Yes, there is biased policing against black people, but they bring a lot of it upon themselves, with the dress code, the swagger on the streets. Maybe other ethnic groups are just more discreet, while we drive around in flashy cars. If you have all this bravado, you are putting yourself in the spotlight.With gangs it's all about street cred, it's all about reputation, and this is the downfall for a lot of these young guys. It backfires on them—they advertise what they are doing to the rest of the world, flaunting their wealth. Police are biased, but young black men have only got themselves to blame if they make themselves a moving target.Black culture is flamboyant, outgoing, loud, and some people can't accept that. If you live in a racist society and the system is against you, then don't make the system worse for yourself. If you get convicted for drug dealing, don't play the race card: You chose the wrong path when you got involved, so don't cry about it when you get caught.
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Criminologist specializing in ethnicityMost ethnic groups have found that, since moving to Britain, generations have worked their way up and out of poorer areas, and they end up doing better than their parents. But with Afro-Caribbeans, this tends not to happen. Why? Because we have suffered levels of discrimination unlike other groups. Now, after 9/11, the Muslim community is experiencing something approaching this level of discrimination.We have always had a fighting spirit against discrimination and social exclusion. In the 1980s, when unemployment among young black males where I lived on the Stonebridge Estate in Harlesden was 95 percent, we hustled, sold weed, cut hair. There was an informal economy.Then came the crack trade via Jamaica. Some young men were able to make lots of money, silly money, buying Lamborghinis, Porsches, and second homes in Jamaica. This came at the time of Thatcherism, when the messages were all about consumerism, looking after number one, that to be someone meant you had to have money. On some estates now there is a real lack of community, so people are more complacent.
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Criminologist specializing in drug policingThe key thing is that the proportions of black people in these figures are generated from the interaction between police decisions on whom to target and the underlying (and much greater) number of people who are involved in drug supply. If police officers have a view that young black men are more likely to be involved, then they will target young black men, and their figures will keep on telling them that young black men are the most likely to be involved in dealing. This is known as "statistical discrimination."
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Former international cocaine traffickerIn the mid 1990s, black dealers dominated the crack scene in London and Bristol—they didn't allow anyone else to sell it, and they have maintained control over the market. They don't import cocaine so much now, but those who do import it – such as the Colombians—sell it to the black dealers because they can get a higher price from black dealers because they sell it at high volume as crack.I've just spent a year in Wandsworth Prison, and there are lots of young black kids coming in for drug dealing. Most of them are in gangs from different areas, which have sprung up everywhere and replaced old crime families. They seem to be very much influenced by hip-hop and American culture. Drug dealing is seen as a cool career, a thing to do, like 50 Cent. I met black kids in there for small amounts of drugs, who said once they are known to police for selling drugs they get targeted like crazy.
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Barrister specializing in drug supply cases in south LondonWhy are so many young black drug dealers going through the courts? I put it down to gang culture. The majority of the gangs in southeast London are black gangs, and they are often involved in selling drugs. A lot of the boys I see come from single parent backgrounds; their father is abroad or in jail. There is a lot of poverty there. Most of them are runners for their bosses, who are black, but the people above them turn out to be proper gangsters, older men, often white, who source drugs from abroad but don't get their hands dirty.A lot of those going through the courts are teenagers, uneducated, very rebellious against society. They don't go to school, though there is the odd university-educated guy. They do it for huge financial reward—up to £1,000 [$1,400] a week.One recent case I've just finished defending involved a gang of young black men from a south London estate who used an insider at an estate agent to set up four flats where they stored 70 percent pure cocaine, cut it up, and put it in bags for sale. In one flat the police raided in Kensington the officers found £66,000 [$95,000] in cash, in another they found £20,000 [$28,000]. The dealers sold it on the streets of Bedford, Norwich, Ipswich, and Luton, where they rented out hub flats to sell from.
Criminologist specializing in the drug tradeMy research has shown that black dealers traveling out of London to sell crack and heroin in less ethnically-mixed areas are highly visible to the police. So a lot of "London" drug dealers are being arrested outside of London. In many of the (predominantly white) home counties and towns and cities commutable from London, I know the police there simply look out for black commuting drug dealers.It might very well be that many of the low-level black dealers are relatively vulnerable young people and that gangs force or use these young people to sell. Vulnerable and excluded teenagers in London—more likely to be black than white, proportionately—are more likely to become involved in drug supply than those with better life chances.These statistics are not representative of the entire drug market, but reflect the part of the market most visible to law enforcement, the heroin and crack trade. So non-black dealers are more heavily involved in drug selling, but are far less visible.Follow VICE's Narcomania series on Twitter.