Reluctant Gangsters - London Borough of Hillingdon

for a few months, usually in all-day ‘drinkers’, until the money ran
out. By the late 1980s, however, improved security meant that it
was becoming much harder to rob banks and post offices, and the
blaggers turned instead to a new and far more lucrative source of
easy money, drugs (Hobbs & Dunningham, 1998, KI.54).
However, unlike the blags of yesteryear, the drugs business is a
business, requiring a relatively elaborate division of labour within a
large workforce, that must maintain and protect the supply chain;
market, package and distribute the product, protect the key
players, silence would-be whistle blowers, collect debts and ensure
contract compliance. Moreover, it is in the nature of the drugs
business that the numbers of people needed to run and protect it
will increase until the market reaches saturation point, which it
certainly had not by 2004 (Waltham Forest Drugs Audit 2004,
2005). In consequence, in this period, there was a growing demand
for young people with the requisite skills and disposition to fill
vacancies in this burgeoning illicit labour market (KI.07,31).
A Growing Market
Indeed, in Waltham Forest, the trade in illicit drugs in general, and
in opiates in particular, has been growing for the past five years at
least. Until recently, however, most arrests and prosecutions have,
been for cannabis trafficking and possession. Yet, throughout this
period, ‘mergers and acquisitions’ in the expanding opiates market,
normally facilitated by violence, have become commonplace (May,
2004). While drug dealing appears to be what the 2004 Waltham
Forest Community Safety and Drug Audit describes as a ‘high
gain/low risk’ activity in the borough, more recent police action
against drug-dealing gangs has led to more arrests for opiate
dealing and seizures of the proceeds. However, the borough’s police
are only able to deal with the drugs trade locally and, because the
problem of class A. drugs has its origins well beyond the confines of
Waltham Forest, effective interdiction requires the co-operation of,
and hence prioritisation by, national and international policing
organisations and Customs and Excise.
The Waltham Forest Drugs Market: The Upper Level
Modern day drugs markets are segmented (see figure 4.1 below:
which uses fictitious names to characterise the various suppliers in
the upper level drug market). In the topmost echelon are the
importers and wholesalers. Some of the crack-cocaine that reaches
the borough is smuggled in large quantities directly from South
America by established London crime families and distributed
through their networks of ‘franchised’ dealers. The other source is
Jamaica, where the cocaine business is said to constitute 40% of
GDP (Silverman, 1993, Figueroa & Sives, 2002). Cocaine imported
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