The Kids of Liverpool's 'Lost Generation' Are Forming Brutal Gangs

This article originally appeared on VICE UK.

A new generation of young gang members are making their mark on Merseyside, England: self-styled "soldiers" wearing tracksuits, North Face coats and Nike Air "trabs." Their long hair is a "ket wig," a term that emerged from the notion that they buy drugs, rather than haircuts.

There are an estimated 50,000 violent young gangs in the UK, according to the Centre for Social Justice. In Liverpool, gang members ride around neighborhoods on "scrambler" motorbikes or quads, protecting their own with dogs and knives, fooling police with high-powered stun-guns disguised as mobile phones, or lighters secretly laced with CS gas. Stashed firearms are just a phone call away.

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.

"The other day one of the Fernhill lot was snatched and taken to a flat. He got slapped about a bit then he was tied up and hooked onto the ceiling. The lads who did it took a selfie standing either side of him and posted it on Instagram so Fernhill could see it. It's fucked up but this is what's happening. And everyone's got guns—or access to them…shotties [shotguns], Glocks, .38s, 9mm handguns. You've got kids of 14 carrying guns. It's madness."

Former Liverpool gangster Stephen "the Devil" French calls these kids "the lost generation."

"These young children—some eight or nine years old—they have fathers that are murderers, uncles that have been killed, cousins that are doing life," he says.

In Anfield last year, a savage assault saw one gang stab a teenager to death with a two-foot sword. The five boys—two of them aged just 13—were part of a mob who chased victim Sean McHugh, 19, into a launderette where he was murdered. Three 14-year-olds and a 15-year-old were jailed for life.

In May, 17-year-old William Cowley stuck a knife into the kidney of a 17-year-old rival after his house was sprayed with bullets. They had met for a one-on-one scrape in an alleyway. The victim survived. Unlike Kevin Wilson, 17, who was shot in the back and killed as he walked down student hotspot Smithdown Road in February. Or Vinny Waddington, 18, who was riding a scrambler bike in Garston in July when he was ambushed and shot dead by a gunman in an Audi.

John Sandwell set up Merseyside-based charity Support After Murder and Manslaughter with his wife Marie, after Marie's daughter Helen McCourt, a 22-year-old insurance clerk, was abducted and killed by pub landlord Ian Simms in her home village of Billinge, near St. Helens, in February 1988.

"It is the ultimate crime," says John, who is currently dealing with the victims of a recent shooting. "It destroys lives. Not just the lives of victims and their families but the offenders too. The ripple effect is devastating, which is why we need to educate young offenders tearing around housing estates causing chaos.

"The problem is that schools and youth clubs just aren't getting the level of funding needed to get the message across. The other issue is that there seems to be an easy availability of guns of all kinds. Pistols, shotguns, automatic weapons. And that is worrying."

Weeks ago Merseyside police officers found a semiautomatic sten gun, a semiautomatic shot gun, a shot gun, and rounds of ammunition hidden on a plot of land in Walton along with packages of controlled drugs, branding the haul a "significant victory" in the war on gun crime. By April this year, they had seized 34 scrambler bikes and followed it up with a string of drugs busts, smashing cannabis farms in raids on "live" gang members. In 2013 they took more than 60 guns off the streets.

Detective Chief Superintendent Paul Richardson, Head of the Matrix Serious and Organised Crime (MSOC) team, says police commitment to putting gun crime offenders in jail is "as strong as ever" but concedes that "we have to be realistic in how difficult this is to sustain as austerity begins to bite."

He adds: "We are having a positive impact on gun crime in Merseyside but cannot and will not be complacent. And just this week, the murder of Lewis Dunne shows that there are still people willing to use guns on Merseyside. One victim of gun crime is one too many. Firearms discharges have decreased by 31 percent from last year, and the Matrix team has undertaken a number of successful initiatives and operations in a bid to disrupt those involved in gun crime.

"Young people need to understand they are masters of their own destiny. The choices they make can change lives and the younger generation must accept responsibility for their actions."

What's the alternative for these young people? "There isn't one," says one 15-year-old drug dealer, part of a gang known as TB—Town Boyz—knocking out "lemo" to punters near Liverpool Crown Court. "This is the only way to make money for us. We can't get a job because we've got no National Insurance number and no one wants to give us one anyway."

"If you grow up in the north end [north Liverpool] you'll struggle to get a job and there's fuck all for kids to do."