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How Drug Gangs Actually Work | How Crime Works | Insider - YouTube
Channel: Insider
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I'm Neil Woods, a former
undercover police officer.
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I used to infiltrate
drug-dealing gangs in the UK.
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And this is "How Crime Works."
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Drug crime is entirely different
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from any other forms of
criminality. Entirely different.
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If the police catch a drug
dealer, crime goes up,
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because there is an
unlimited number of people
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wanting to take that opportunity.
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What happens over time is, at every level,
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is where police catch street drug dealers,
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they help create monopolies.
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So if you catch a dealer
who controls half a city,
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the dealer who's most able
to take opportunity of that
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is the guy that controls the other half.
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In essence, it's an
extremely hostile environment
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because only the most controlling
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and hostile gangs
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are the ones who are the most successful.
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Policing drugs has made
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the heroin and crack cocaine markets
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in the UK and around the world
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much more hostile, but
also much more competitive.
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Because people get arrested,
this creates opportunities.
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And if you consider that
if the police catch a gang
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which controls a quarter of a city,
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then the gang that is most capable
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and able to take up that opportunity
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and take over control of
that quarter of the city
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is a gang that already controls
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another quarter of the city.
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So it makes for a very combative
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and competitive marketplace.
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The target customers of
those organized-crime groups
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is the most problematic
consumers of those commodities.
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The most hardcore 10% of heroin consumers
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consume 50% of the market
value of that heroin.
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So you can see just
how much money there is
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in dominating or exploiting
that hardcore 10%.
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You can make an
extraordinary amount of money
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with dealing with relatively few people.
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I realized that I had to
understand the people around me,
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which meant understanding
a group of people
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that I'd previously had a
huge amount of stigma for.
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And I had to readdress that quite quickly,
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because I had to know about --
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I had to function like them.
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But I quickly realized that those people
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were in a pattern of behavior
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that was out of their control
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because of what had happened to them.
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And that was important to understand,
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because by understanding that,
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I could understand how organized
crime was exploiting them
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and how I could appear
to be exploited myself
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and therefore get the
credibility to climb the ladder,
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buy increasingly large amounts of drugs,
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and network with the right people.
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The most significant dealer,
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or the most significant
foot soldier, I suppose,
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and at the bottom rung of organized crime,
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is the most exploited person
in the whole supply chain.
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And that is the user-dealer.
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It's somebody who is supplying drugs
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to fund their own habit.
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More often than not, they're doing that
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because they've been forced
to do so by organized crime.
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But they're the most important
person to get to know,
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because they are the person
that organized crime relies on.
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Or, nowadays, it's quite often children
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who are the dealers to rely
on for organized crime.
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A user-dealer, from
wherever they're living,
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they would go where they're
told in the early morning
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to where the next-rung-up dealer would be,
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and they would be given the package.
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And more often than not,
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that package would already be
weighed into specific deals
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and sealed up, heat-sealed in plastic,
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and given to that dealer,
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and there would be an agreement
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that he could take a percentage of those
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as long as he sold the total number.
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Now, if you were to
ask me how the day went
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for the person running
a team of user-dealers,
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that gangster running a quarter of a city,
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say for example,
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most of those people I've met
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have been quite professional.
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They haven't used any drugs,
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they have been efficient,
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they have got up in the morning early,
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and they usually do it in shifts.
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They'll split a morning
shift and a late shift,
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and they'll do it in rotation as a team.
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They will check which SIM
card goes in their phone
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or which phone they're using for the day.
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They will have a separate SIM
with a database of numbers
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which are of most use to them.
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They will check in with their companions,
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and they will meet up with the person
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that they're working with for that day.
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And what that would normally mean
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is that they will have a driver.
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They will sit in the back
of a car quite often,
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and they will be driven around
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where they will be either doing
deliveries to user-dealers,
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sometimes meeting in the back of that car,
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or sometimes meeting at remote locations,
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which will change on a rotational basis
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or on a whim.
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They will keep a careful eye
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on locations where there is a stash,
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where they are stashing
their next resupply of drugs.
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They will also keep tabs on people
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who are doing the measuring-out
and the heat-sealing
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to make sure that they're
doing that correctly.
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They will constantly be in contact
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with whoever is tasked
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in the policing of those people
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to make sure everyone is staying honest
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and working according to
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the team ethos, shall I say,
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and that makes sure that
no one's ripping them off.
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In essence, it's an extremely
hostile environment,
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but I have to reiterate,
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it's the presence of people
like me in that marketplace
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and it's general drugs policing
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and the use of police informants
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which creates that desperately
violent marketplace.
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The gangs that are the most successful
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are the ones who are most able
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and willing to use immediate violence.
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And so that threat of
violence and that intimidation
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becomes one of the most
important tools of the trade.
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And so they have to put time into that,
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they have to put effort,
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they have to bring discipline
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into that control of people.
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So they need to give tighteners to people,
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they need to constantly
build their reputation.
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So if there is a group of sex workers
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who are committed to buying
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the heroin or crack from that gang,
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then they will remind them of that,
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and they will use violence to do so.
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I had actually given up undercover work
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just before the Burger
Bar Boys investigation.
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But I was manipulated,
persuaded into doing it
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because two other undercover operatives
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had tried to get close to them,
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and they'd not got close,
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dangerously not got close.
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But it was an extraordinary
amount of work,
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and it had really serious ups and downs.
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So, I went to Northampton
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and I picked on two vulnerable
people to manipulate.
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And I decided these were the people
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who were going to eventually
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introduce me to the Burger Bar Boys.
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Because I knew they
were connected to them.
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I knew that they'd been
dealing for them at one point.
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And after lots of work,
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I eventually persuaded
them to introduce me
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to the Burger Bar Boys.
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And that was a terrifying experience.
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And so I was directed to
where they were holding court,
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their little headquarters
at the snooker club.
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I was directed to the
washrooms, the door burst open,
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and this hooded figure went
into the toilet cubicle
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and stood on the toilet and looked over,
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and he said, "What's this?"
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And he kept asking other questions
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and then rephrasing the questions,
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trying to catch me out.
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I knew the guy looking
down at me from the cubicle
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was implicated in seven different murders.
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In particular, I knew he was the person
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who'd sourced two submachine guns
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for a multiple murder of two women.
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Then four hooded figures came in,
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and as the door bashed open
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and they started walking around me,
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every so often one would headbutt me
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on the side of the head on the ear.
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And I was getting jostled
around more and more.
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And then all of a sudden he said,
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"All right, then. What do you want?"
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As soon as he said the words,
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"All right, then. What do you want?"
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The four hooded figures had walked out.
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And I said, "I'll have
one on one, please,"
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which meant I'll have
a 1.4 deal of heroin,
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1.4 deal of crack.
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And I handed over my 40 pounds,
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and he gave it to me looking down on me.
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And then I got his phone number.
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He put Woody, he actually put my name
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in the phone, his phone.
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And I started to buy increasing
amounts from them more often
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and gather evidence of
conspiracy against the gang.
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I was in.
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The most important task that I had,
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to get that phone number,
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to get that beginnings of trust,
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I'd got it. That was it.
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It was just the most intense operation.
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There was always something,
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and there was always
that threat of violence.
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It never went away.
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Never went away, not for one minute.
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And, anyway, seven months, it lasted.
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And I was pleased to think
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by the end of that seven months
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that I'd gathered evidence
against 96 people,
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the six main gangsters
plus 90 other people.
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And I knew there was no one else to meet.
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There were no new phone numbers,
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there was no names I
hadn't heard of already.
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I'd caught everyone.
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There were police from
five different counties,
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hundreds of people involved
in the arrest phase.
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Loads of doors being smashed in.
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And a week or so after the event,
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I spoke to the intel
officer, and he said to me,
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"Yep, we managed to interrupt
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the heroin and crack cocaine supply
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in Northampton for a full two hours."
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All of the belief I had
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that had been eroding
away over those years,
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and it had been eroding away,
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I had to give in to the
evidence before my eyes, really,
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and realize that this is futile.
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Now, what this does is
it increases corruption.
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If you have allowed a dealer
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or a gang or a cartel
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to increase their share of the market,
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then they are richer,
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which means they have more
money to invest in corruption.
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In Mexico, there used to be 20 cartels.
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Now there are three.
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Each one of those three are
richer than those 20 used to be.
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Sweden has an extraordinary
drug gang war going on,
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and they're not just using machine guns,
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they're using grenades.
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They're using IEDs. They're
blowing each other up.
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There's literally hundreds
of bombs going off in Sweden
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between drug gangs competing to control
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drug markets across northern Europe.
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This is something that we
should pay attention to,
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especially as Sweden takes pride
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in having the toughest
drug laws in Europe.
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Cause and effect, I would say.
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The most significant
change in the drug markets
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has been the shift of online.
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The dark web, the dark markets.
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The lack of physical contact
means there's less violence,
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so that's a good thing it's moved online.
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And also there is a way
online, in some regard,
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of having self-regulation,
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because there's reviews left,
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so people can increase the likelihood
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of better-quality commodities.
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Claims by FBI agents or whoever it is
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that they can crack codes and use hackers
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to bring these markets
down, it's not true.
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The dark markets will continue
to become more efficient
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as a response to policing.
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Since I've left the police,
I've written a memoir,
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and that's called "Good Cop, Bad War."
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My position is the position
of my organization,
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which is the Law Enforcement
Action Partnership.
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We advocate for the full
regulation of all the drug markets
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to take control away from organized crime.
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And, increasingly, we're becoming
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the most important voices for reform.
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