The street code of vengeance that sparked the riots
Gang rivalries, an unsolved murder and a code of vengeance are at the heart of the events which sparked the rioting and looting last week.
Kelvin Easton, left, and Mark Duggan Photo: PIXEL
9:00PM BST 13 Aug 2011
138 Comments The events can be directly traced back to the death of a 23-year-old man stabbed through the heart as he left an East End night club and the actions of his friend who believed he was honour-bound to avenge his death.
The dead man was Kelvin Easton, known as Smegz, who was an elder in the "Bloodline", from the Broadwater Farm estate in Tottenham, one of London's "post code" gangs.
The club where he died had been heaving: more than 500 people were inside at the time of the attack. But this is a world where the "stooly" who talks to the police is an outcast.
Tragically, it was not - until last week - an unusual story: London has seen 92 similar gang related murders in the last two years. The gangs control the drugs trade on their territories, sometimes little more than a few streets, and will kill and maim rivals to defend it.
The young foot soldiers in this world are bound by a warped code of honour and their movements restricted for fear of breaking down the uneasy truces between them.
Police sources say Easton was a key figure in the gang's hierarchy, a member of its elite Star Gang clique.
With his death responsibility for revenge fell to his closest friend, his "god brother", Mark Duggan, known by the street name Starrish Mark.
According to his family, Duggan had left gangs behind and had not been in trouble with the police for nine years when he served time on remand for an unspecified crime. Others dispute this, claiming Duggan was a key gang lieutenant.
Intriguingly his uncle was Desmond Noonan, a notorious Manchester gangster who once boasted of having "more guns than the police" and one of whose brothers, Domenyk, was arrested during rioting on Tuesday in Manchester.
For several days before his death Duggan was the target of specialist police motorcycle surveillance teams and officers from Operation Trident, the Met's unit tackling "black on black" shootings, usually linked to drug dealing.
Last Thursday, a pre-planned "hard stop" was carried out as he travelled in a mini-can on Ferry Lane, Tottenham, to arrest him. Duggan was heading for nearby Chingford, the scene of a mass crackdown on drug gangs last month, and 15 minutes before the shooting had sent a message to his partner saying he was being followed by "the feds".
It is still not known exactly what happened when the minicab was stopped and the Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating. Duggan was armed with a blank-firing BBM "Bruni" pistol which had been converted to fire live bullets. It was found in a sock at the scene.
The IPCC initially - and wrongly - briefed that there had been an exchange of fire. One bullet killed Duggan, but an officer was hit, a bullet lodging in his shoulder-mounted radio. Forensic evidence later revealed this bullet was fired from a police weapon. It remains unknown whether Duggan was in or out of the car when he was shot.
The death sparked widespread community anger. "He was not mad enough or bad enough" to get into a police shoot-out, his friends and family said.
His family staged a peaceful demonstration outside Tottenham police station last Saturday but within hours it escalated. A group of young men set light to several squad cars sparking a riot - which led to the large scale copycat disorder across the country in the days that followed.
That Duggan was armed, sources have told the Sunday Telegraph, was directly linked to the death of his friend Easton.
"The problem is when you leave a gang, or grow out of the gang you are still tied by friendship and family," said one source who knew him.
"It doesn't matter if you have left the roads, your rivals do not care. You are always a potential victim, even if that is just because you are a familiar face from the ends [gang territory] or because of a relative, like Smegz. Mark did not necessarily have to had played an active role in the gang to be a target or fear for his life."
Prime Minister David Cameron last week declared war on the street gangs. But Easton's death illustrate the difficulties that war will face.
Police orders are to "remain focused upon individual victims and offenders" and to use "a significant degree of caution... to ensure that interventions do not raise the status of individuals who commit violent offences as part of such groups".
The gangs, an internal police report last year explained, are prioritised by "levels of criminality" backed up a police "youth strategy ...to identify young people most vulnerable to joining gangs in the future".
School visits, drama groups and football tournaments are used in an attempt to separate youngsters from the gangs. But once they are members, there is little that can be done, and they are plunged into turf wars and revenge feuds, making them the targets of rivals.
Duggan thought he was a target and, as a fellow member of the Star Gang and Easton's best friend, he was also under huge peer pressure to seek retribution.
Local sources suggest Easton was the victim of rival gangs from Hackney's Amhurst Road estate linked with the London Fields Boys, the Lords of Stokey and Smalley Boys.
Several members of these gangs were jailed earlier this year for stabbing a member of the rival 'Soldiers of Shakespeare' from Milton Gardens estate in Hackney. He was surrounded in his car in Stoke Newington and stabbed in the arm, chest and spine.
Growing internal Tottenham rivalries are another possible motive. According to the "London Street Gangs" website the Broadwater Water Farm (BWF) gang, of which Easton was a leading light, had been "causing unrest in their attempts to exert dominance over the whole of Tottenham".
Easton was stabbed after a fight broke out at a the Boheme nightclub on the Mile End Road in East London.
He was apparently attacked by a group of young men as a was leaving, fell to the bottom of the stairs and collapsed surrounded by terrified clubbers, many of them covered in blood.
Messages posted on a supposed memorial to Easton make clear that even in death there is no escaping the gang culture, with one enemy writing: "Smegz tried it with a Hackney nigga and got deaded. You man play your position before more of you get it."
The stalled investigation into Easton's death is typical of the difficulties police face. The gangs hate the police more than each other and the investigation into Easton's killing faced a wall of silence.
So far the police have arrested 12 people in connection with the attack, but no one has been charged. The suspects are on police bail "pending further enquiries" - not usually a sign that officers are building a firm case.
Scotland Yard was reluctant to connect Easton's murder with the shooting of Duggan. "We are not making that link," said a spokeswoman last week.
Last May, the head of the Met's Homicide and Serious Crime Command, Detective Chief Inspector Charles King gave an insight into the difficulties his officers were experiencing.
Offering £20,000 for information, he said: "The Boheme nightclub was very busy on the night Kelvin was attacked. I am confident that there are people who saw what happened that night and I hope this significant reward will encourage anyone with additional information to come forward.
"There are special measures we can take to protect identities and we will do everything possible to ensure witnesses remain anonymous."
The reward remains unclaimed.
With his death responsibility for revenge fell to his closest friend, his "god brother", Mark Duggan, known by the street name Starrish Mark.
According to his family, Duggan had left gangs behind and had not been in trouble with the police for nine years when he served time on remand for an unspecified crime. Others dispute this, claiming Duggan was a key gang lieutenant.
Intriguingly his uncle was Desmond Noonan, a notorious Manchester gangster who once boasted of having "more guns than the police" and one of whose brothers, Domenyk, was arrested during rioting on Tuesday in Manchester.
For several days before his death Duggan was the target of specialist police motorcycle surveillance teams and officers from Operation Trident, the Met's unit tackling "black on black" shootings, usually linked to drug dealing.
Last Thursday, a pre-planned "hard stop" was carried out as he travelled in a mini-can on Ferry Lane, Tottenham, to arrest him. Duggan was heading for nearby Chingford, the scene of a mass crackdown on drug gangs last month, and 15 minutes before the shooting had sent a message to his partner saying he was being followed by "the feds".
It is still not known exactly what happened when the minicab was stopped and the Independent Police Complaints Commission is investigating. Duggan was armed with a blank-firing BBM "Bruni" pistol which had been converted to fire live bullets. It was found in a sock at the scene.
The IPCC initially - and wrongly - briefed that there had been an exchange of fire. One bullet killed Duggan, but an officer was hit, a bullet lodging in his shoulder-mounted radio. Forensic evidence later revealed this bullet was fired from a police weapon. It remains unknown whether Duggan was in or out of the car when he was shot.
The death sparked widespread community anger. "He was not mad enough or bad enough" to get into a police shoot-out, his friends and family said.
His family staged a peaceful demonstration outside Tottenham police station last Saturday but within hours it escalated. A group of young men set light to several squad cars sparking a riot - which led to the large scale copycat disorder across the country in the days that followed.
That Duggan was armed, sources have told the Sunday Telegraph, was directly linked to the death of his friend Easton.
"The problem is when you leave a gang, or grow out of the gang you are still tied by friendship and family," said one source who knew him.
"It doesn't matter if you have left the roads, your rivals do not care. You are always a potential victim, even if that is just because you are a familiar face from the ends [gang territory] or because of a relative, like Smegz. Mark did not necessarily have to had played an active role in the gang to be a target or fear for his life."
Prime Minister David Cameron last week declared war on the street gangs. But Easton's death illustrate the difficulties that war will face.
Police orders are to "remain focused upon individual victims and offenders" and to use "a significant degree of caution... to ensure that interventions do not raise the status of individuals who commit violent offences as part of such groups".
The gangs, an internal police report last year explained, are prioritised by "levels of criminality" backed up a police "youth strategy ...to identify young people most vulnerable to joining gangs in the future".
School visits, drama groups and football tournaments are used in an attempt to separate youngsters from the gangs. But once they are members, there is little that can be done, and they are plunged into turf wars and revenge feuds, making them the targets of rivals.
Duggan thought he was a target and, as a fellow member of the Star Gang and Easton's best friend, he was also under huge peer pressure to seek retribution.
Local sources suggest Easton was the victim of rival gangs from Hackney's Amhurst Road estate linked with the London Fields Boys, the Lords of Stokey and Smalley Boys.
Several members of these gangs were jailed earlier this year for stabbing a member of the rival 'Soldiers of Shakespeare' from Milton Gardens estate in Hackney. He was surrounded in his car in Stoke Newington and stabbed in the arm, chest and spine.
Growing internal Tottenham rivalries are another possible motive. According to the "London Street Gangs" website the Broadwater Water Farm (BWF) gang, of which Easton was a leading light, had been "causing unrest in their attempts to exert dominance over the whole of Tottenham".
Easton was stabbed after a fight broke out at a the Boheme nightclub on the Mile End Road in East London.
He was apparently attacked by a group of young men as a was leaving, fell to the bottom of the stairs and collapsed surrounded by terrified clubbers, many of them covered in blood.
Messages posted on a supposed memorial to Easton make clear that even in death there is no escaping the gang culture, with one enemy writing: "Smegz tried it with a Hackney nigga and got deaded. You man play your position before more of you get it."
The stalled investigation into Easton's death is typical of the difficulties police face. The gangs hate the police more than each other and the investigation into Easton's killing faced a wall of silence.
So far the police have arrested 12 people in connection with the attack, but no one has been charged. The suspects are on police bail "pending further enquiries" - not usually a sign that officers are building a firm case.
Scotland Yard was reluctant to connect Easton's murder with the shooting of Duggan. "We are not making that link," said a spokeswoman last week.
Last May, the head of the Met's Homicide and Serious Crime Command, Detective Chief Inspector Charles King gave an insight into the difficulties his officers were experiencing.
Offering £20,000 for information, he said: "The Boheme nightclub was very busy on the night Kelvin was attacked. I am confident that there are people who saw what happened that night and I hope this significant reward will encourage anyone with additional information to come forward.
"There are special measures we can take to protect identities and we will do everything possible to ensure witnesses remain anonymous."
The reward remains unclaimed.
