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Layla, a 36-year-old heroin user from Southend, told Coomber: "There is a lot of violence, there's a lot of robbery from drug dealers… the young lads, because a lot of it is youngsters, people will phone up to say, 'I want five of each.' So they'll come out with ten shots, and the person that's scoring off them, they'll hold a knife to them, or just blatantly rob them. Or they'll find out where they're serving up from, because they move from people to people's flats, and they'll just go in, balaclava, in there, with a hammer, do the young lad, or young girl, whoever it may be, and just rob them of their drugs. It goes on all the time; every week you hear about one person being robbed."TRENDING ON VICE NEWS: Ohio's Legal Weed Proposal Could Create the World's First 'Pot Grower Oligarchy'
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Many of those interviewed by Coomber remarked that most of the London dealers in Southend were young black men, often identified as being "Somalis." This was reflected in a flurry of headlines four years ago in the Southend Echo, such as "Somali gangs bring back terror to the tower block" and "Town drugs ring run by Somalis." While not all of the London drug gangs coming to Southend are of Somali origin, Somalis have a large presence between London and Essex, particularly in the key waypoint of Basildon.Last year, Mohamed Hassan, the leader of a Somali drug gang that ran drugs in Basildon, was jailed after what the papers called a "Reservoir Dogs-style attack" on an undercover detective in 2012. The officer only escaped after jumping 12 feet through a first floor window.I spoke to Adan, a youth worker working with Somali drug dealers in south London, to ask him if the London Somali crews are still heading out of the capital to find new business. "A lot of the south London boys, from Woolwich and Streatham, they go to Southend to sell drugs. Their elders control a lot of the Essex line out of London, through Basildon. They ain't the battle-hardened soldiers of Mogadishu or Al-Shabaab; they're just kids who want to live the hip-hop dream. They want the honey and the money, and to show off about it on social media. Some of them are not streetwise; they don't understand heroin—they think dealing drugs is like working in a shop."
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