Gangland UK. Christopher Berry-Dee
was convicted of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office and two further charges of conspiracy to pervert the course of justice. He received three years’ imprisonment.
40-year-old David Barrett was convicted of two charges of conspiracy to commit misconduct in a public office and was sentenced to three years. Darren Peters, 38, and Javade Rashid, aged 40, were convicted of the same charge and were sentenced to four years and six months respectively, and a fifth person cannot be named for legal reasons.
Chief Constable Green said, ‘When we put in place the operation to dismantle Gunn’s empire we wanted to get justice for every victim of the evil of Colin Gunn. We haven’t finished that quest for justice.’
And in March 2008 Colin Gunn’s legal advisor indicated that his client’s own quest for justice was not yet over. It was reported that Gunn intended to appeal against his convctions on the basis that his conversations with lawyers while in jail may have been bugged.
A Bestwood community leader, who does not want to be named, said, ‘A church article is where the Gunns got this Robin Hood reputation. They were once good guys, genuinely. But as time went on, they chose their paths, although even today the perception around here is that they are nice guys because they don’t cause, or want, any trouble on their doorstep.’
As with the Krays in 1960s London, many residents say that the Gunns only hurt those who deserved it, but the truth is somewhat different. The reputation of Bestwood as a no-go for strangers has forced house prices down and it is populated by those who have been moved into council houses or cannot afford anywhere else.
The community leader said, ‘The fear factor remains. A lot of people say he [Colin] would look after them. It’s how the IRA operated. Gunn made sure crime was low so he could go about his business undetected and without police being around. A lot of people regarded him as a sort of Robin Hood character but then most of them had no idea he was involved in such serious stuff as murder. They will be shocked to find out and think his reputation will change.
‘There is no doubt that he [Colin] is a nasty piece of work. The way he worked was that so much of the fear is fuelled by rumour and urban myth. There are rumours of people going missing. There have been rumours that Colin is coming out, that David has already been seen out and about. David is a different kettle of fish. You can at least talk to him. Colin has had a reputation for being a nutter… he hits you first then talks to you.
‘Everyone is waiting to see what happens now there is a vacuum and there are a couple of families on the estate who people are looking at. But the Gunns have long arms and are still running the place through their associates, fuelling the fear with rumours that they are coming out.’
It is a very remote possibility that Colin Gunn will ever be released from prison. Since he was jailed, there has only been one fatal shooting in Nottingham – a result that has seen the city slip down the gun crime league. ‘Undoubtedly, it’s a safer place,’ says Mr Green, adding, ‘from the day they were arrested and taken off the streets, the city of Nottingham was transformed, and long may it remain so. I would think a fool would say gun crime is dead, but what the figures show, and what the feel of the city shows, is that it’s a very different place to what it was a few years ago.’
So if we are to use any yardstick by which to measure the lives and crimes committed by the Gunn brothers, the ‘adventures’ of our legendary Robin Hood may be a good place to start, for most certainly the Gunns were not in the same league as their more ‘celebrated’ London counterparts, the Kray brothers.
For the most part, the Gunns are a pair of intellectually-challenged common thugs. From a sink-estate background, perhaps they glimpsed the opportunity to enter ‘the Big Time’, when it became obvious that the Sheriff of Nottingham (Chief Constable Steve Green) was well and truly committed to dealing with the African-Caribbean – or ‘Yardie’ – crime problem that was overwhelming his city.
There seems to be some confusion as to exactly when the Yardies arrived in the UK. The Yardie phenomenon was first noted in the late 1980s and their rise is linked to that of crack cocaine in which many trade. However, this pre-dates the event that gave them their name.
‘Yardie’ is a term stemming from the slang name given to occupants of government yards in Trenchtown, a neighbourhood in West Kingston, Jamaica. Trenchtown was originally built as a housing project following devastation caused by Hurricane Charlie in 1951. Each development was built around a central courtyard with communal cooking facilities. Due to the poverty endemic in the neighbourhood, crime and gang violence became rife, leading the occupants of Trenchtown to be in part stigmatised by the term ‘Yardie’. Today, in the UK, they drive top-of-the-range BMWs, flaunt designer gold ‘bling-bling’ jewellery and carry automatic guns as a weapon of choice. In terms of a reputation for ruthless violence, they could one day rival the Triads or Mafia.
But if the Gunns thought they could even begin to emulate these ‘gangstas’, in terms of drug and arms dealing, as well as robbery, a lifestyle synonymous with violence – impulse shootings and gangland-style executions used to sort out internal squabbles – then they had to be living in cloud cuckoo land.
To further debunk their pseudo Robin Hood image, the Gunns most certainly did not rob from the rich to give to the poor. To begin with, the investigation into the Gunns and their activities cost millions of pounds, all of which was provided courtesy of the taxpayer. For that matter, they hadn’t even had the intelligence to rip off the rich – theirs was not a world of international banking frauds, credit-card-cloning, international carring enterprises or links with Eastern European master criminals. In reality, the Gunns robbed, brutalised, dealt in drugs, threatened, extorted, bullied, corrupted, terrorised, tortured, murdered and conspired, all with the sole aim of filling their own wallets at the expense of others.
And the seat of the Gunns’ empire? A rundown council house on the Bestwood Estate, Nottingham, with their communications centre only a short walk away… at their mum’s house.
And how did the Gunns spend their ill-gotten gains? No Rolexes or Bentleys for them, but they could muster up a clapped-out old car or two, and drink themselves stupid in a few local pubs – one of which has since been demolished in remembrance of Colin’s patronage.
Perhaps Colin Gunn’s crew could bear comparison with Robin’s Merry Men? Unfortunately not – they turned out to be a bunch of semi-illiterate hoodies, who would ‘grass’ up their own grandmothers to save their own skins. Two crooked cops, one of whom sold his soul for measly discounts on cheap suits. It should also be remembered that Robin’s legendary band of men managed to live in hiding undetected in Sherwood Forest, leaving the Sheriff exasperated at every turn. Colin Gunn, however, intellectually challenged as he was, managed to leave a critical paper trail that led the Sheriff’s men to his own front door.
Levity aside, the Gunns have caused mayhem within the confines of the City of Nottingham. Sure, they plundered and murdered and, in some respects, they ‘took care of business’ on their own doorstep. They committed crimes which the city would rather forget – indeed, my many requests for the local newspaper and the local police to contribute to this chapter have been ignored. One may wonder why.
At the end of the day, it is the people of Nottinghamshire who have had to foot the bill for its law enforcement agency’s efforts to bring the Gunns to justice. It has been a million-pound expenditure, one that has been funded by decent, law-abiding, citizens. And one view prevailing among many in the area is that if the police had adopted a proactive approach – akin to the old Bobbies on the beat – to dealing with local crime when the problem first arose, instead of consigning finite financial and manpower resources to form filling and office filing, the problems caused by the Gunn brothers may never have escalated to such destructive proportions.
In retrospect, the lack of inner-city, proactive, three-strikes-and-you’re-out policing and hardline law enforcement was a major contributory factor in giving the Gunn brothers licence to continue as they did. And some connected with the Gunns’ history in Nottingham believe that the police must bear some responsibility in the murders perpetrated or sanctioned by the