How Drug Gangs Actually Work | How Crime Works | Insider

I'm Neil Woods, a former undercover cop. He used to infiltrate

drug

gangs

in the UK. And that's how

crime

work

s. Drug-related

crime

s are completely different from any other form of crime. Completely different. If the police catch a

drug

dealer, crime increases, because there are an unlimited number of people who want to take advantage of that opportunity. What happens over time is that, at all levels, when police catch street drug dealers, they help create monopolies. So if you catch a dealer who controls half the city, the dealer who can take advantage of that opportunity is the one who controls the other half.

In essence, it is an extremely hostile environment because only the most controlling and hostile

gangs

are the most successful. Drug policing has made the heroin and crack cocaine markets in the UK and around the world much more hostile, but also much more competitive. As people are arrested, this creates opportunities. And if we consider that if the police catch a gang that controls a quarter of a city, then the gang most capable and capable of taking advantage of that opportunity and taking control of that quarter of the city is a gang that already controls another. city ​​neighborhood.

Therefore, a very combative and competitive market is created. The target customers of these organized crime groups are the most problematic consumers of these products. The top 10% of heroin users consume 50% of the market value of that heroin. So you can see how much money there is in dominating or exploiting that unconditional 10%. You can make an extraordinary amount of money dealing with relatively few people. I realized that I had to understand the people around me, which meant understanding a group of people that I had previously had a lot of stigma about. And I had to re-address that quickly, because I had to know… I had to function like them.

But I quickly realized that these people had a pattern of behavior that was out of their control because of what had happened to them. And that was important to understand, because by understanding that, I could understand how organized crime was exploiting them and how I myself could appear exploited and therefore gain the credibility to move up the ladder, buy increasing quantities of drugs. and net

work

with the right people. I assume that the most important trafficker, or the most important foot soldier, and who is at the bottom of organized crime, is the most exploited person in the entire supply chain.

And that is the user-distributor. He is someone who supplies drugs to finance his own habit. Most of the time they do it because they have been forced to do so by organized crime. But he is the most important person to get to know, because he is the person on whom organized crime depends. Or, today, it is very often children who are the traffickers on whom organized crime relies. A user-distributor, from wherever he lived, would go where he was told early in the morning, where the next-rung distributor would be, and have the package delivered. And most of the time, that package would already be broken down into specific agreements and sealed, heat sealed in plastic and delivered to that distributor, and there would be an agreement that he could keep a percentage of them as long as he sold.

The total number. Now, if you were to ask me how the day was for the person who runs a team of user-distributors, that gangster who runs a quarter of a city, say, for example, most of the people I've met have been pretty professional . They have not used any drugs, they have been efficient, they have gotten up early in the morning and they usually do it in shifts. They will split a morning shift and an afternoon shift, and they will do it in rotation as a team. They will check which SIM card goes in their phone or which phone they are using during the day.

They will have a separate SIM with a database of numbers that are most useful to them. They will communicate with their colleagues and meet with the person they will be working with that day. And what that would normally mean is that they will have a driver. They will sit in the back of a car quite often and drive them around locations where they will make deliveries to user-dealers, sometimes they will meet in the back of that car or sometimes they will meet in remote locations which will change as necessary. on a rotating basis or on a whim.

They will keep a close eye on stash spots, where they will hide their next drug supply. They will also monitor the people measuring and heat sealing to make sure they are doing it correctly. They will be constantly in contact with whoever is tasked with keeping an eye on those people to make sure everyone is honest and working according to the team spirit, I should say, and that ensures that no one rips them off. At its core, it is an extremely hostile environment, but I must reiterate that it is the presence of people like me in that market and the general vigilance against drugs and the use of police informants that creates that desperately violent market.

The gangs that are most successful are those that are most capable and willing to use immediate violence. And so that threat of violence and that intimidation becomes one of the most important tools of the trade. And then they have to dedicate time to that, they have to make an effort, they have to discipline that control of people. Therefore, they need to give reinforcements to people, they need to constantly build their reputation. So if there is a group of sex workers who are committed to buying heroin or crack from that gang, then they will remind them and use violence to do it.

In fact, he had left undercover work just before the Burger Bar Boys investigation. But I was manipulated, persuaded to do it because two other undercover agents had tried to get close to them, and they didn't get close, dangerously they didn't get close. But it was an extraordinary amount of work and had some really serious ups and downs. So I went to Northampton and chose two vulnerable people to manipulate. And I decided that these were the people who would eventually introduce me to the Burger Bar Boys. Because I knew they were connected to them. I knew they had been negotiating for them at some point.

And after a lot of work, I finally convinced them to introduce me to the Burger Bar Boys. And that was a terrifying experience. And then I was directed to the place where they were meeting, their little headquarters in the pool club. I was directed to the bathrooms, the door burst open and this hooded figure walked into the bathroom stall, stood on the toilet, looked and said, "What is this?" And he kept asking other questions and then rephrasing them, trying to surprise me. I knew the guy watching me from the cubicle was involved in seven different murders.

In particular, he knew that he was the person who had obtained two machine guns for the multiple murders of two women. Then four hooded figures entered, and when the door burst open and they began to walk around me, from time to time one would headbutt me on the side of the head, in the ear. And each time they pushed me more and more. And then suddenly he said, "Okay, then. What do you want?" As soon as he said the words: "Okay, then. What do you want?" The four hooded figures were gone. And I said, "I'll take one on one, please," which meant I'll take 1.4 heroin and 1.4 crack.

And I gave him my 40 pounds, and he gave it to me looking down on me. And then I got his phone number. He put Woody, in fact he put my name on the phone, his phone. And I began buying larger and larger quantities from them more frequently and gathering evidence of conspiracy against the gang. I was inside. The most important task I had, getting that phone number, getting that start of trust, I had achieved. That was it. It was simply the most intense operation. There was always something and there was always that threat of violence. It never disappeared.

He never left, not even for a minute. And anyway, it lasted seven months. And I was pleased to think that at the end of those seven months I had gathered evidence against 96 people, the six main gangsters plus 90 other people. And I knew there was no one else to find. There were no new phone numbers, no names I hadn't already heard of. He had caught everyone. There were police officers from five different counties and hundreds of people participated in the arrest phase. A lot of doors were broken. And about a week after the event, I spoke to the intelligence officer and he said, "Yes, we managed to disrupt the supply of heroin and crack cocaine in Northampton for a full two hours." All the belief that I had that had been eroded by Over those years, and it had been eroded, I had to give in to the evidence before my eyes,

actually

, and realize that this is useless.

Now what this does is increase corruption. If a trafficker, gang or cartel has been allowed to increase their market share, then they are richer, which means they have more money to invest in corruption. In Mexico there used to be 20 cartels. Now there are three. Each of those three is richer than the 20 they used to be. Sweden has an extraordinary war between drug gangs, and they are not only using machine guns, but also grenades. They are using improvised explosive devices. They are blowing each other up. There are literally hundreds of bombs exploding in Sweden between drug gangs competing to control drug markets across northern Europe.

This is something we should pay attention to, especially as Sweden prides itself on having the strictest drug laws in Europe. Cause and effect, I would say. The most significant change in drug markets has been the shift to the Internet. The dark web, dark markets. The lack of physical contact means there is less violence, so it's a good thing it's moved online. And there's also a way online, in a sense, to have self-regulation, because reviews remain, so people can increase the likelihood of getting better quality products. Claims by FBI agents or whoever that they can crack codes and use hackers to take down these markets are not true.

Dark markets will continue to become more efficient in response to police surveillance. Since I left the police, I wrote a memoir called "Good Police, Bad War." My position is the position of my organization, which is the Law Enforcement Action Partnership. We advocate for the full regulation of all drug markets to take control away from organized crime. And, increasingly, we are becoming the most important voices for reform.