Gangs: A Case Study into the Peckham Boys

PECKHAM BOYS

14.Oktober 2013

The Peckham Boys are a gang which has its place, as the name says already particular in Peckham, South London. The gang originated in 1990 in North Peckham Estate and the members are primarily Black British.

The gang is splitted up in many subgroups according the ages or locations and is also known as ‘Black Gang’, due to its association with the colour black. The gang was involved very often in shootings, murders, robberies and other criminal delicts.

The Peckham Boys and their enemies

Historically, the Peckham Boys have had a fierce rivalry with gangs from Brixton and New Cross. The biggest enemy gang are the Ghetto Boys. This gang is based at the Pepys Estate and Woodpecker Estate in Deptford and New Cross respectively, South London. The gangs were always in trouble with each other so there were also many fights. The dispute between the Peckham Boys and the Ghetto Boys of New Cross had been ongoing for over 20 years, although it is now over. In year 2006 the Peckham Boys were again involved in a war with them. In the conflict, an innocent man was shot dead in New Cross, mistaken as a Ghetto Boys member by the Peckham Boys. A group of 50 youths on riding mountainsbikes shot him dead and cycled right away to Deptford. Accidentally his younger brother Alexander was a Ghetto Boy but died also in 2006 in a car crash.

Characteristics of the Peckham Boys

There were many attacks on innocent people by the group. Many just were stabbed or shot without any reason and only a few survived the attacks. During a conflict, police seized handguns and sub-machine guns.

In September 2008 the police conducted dawn raids on suspected members of the Peckham Boys gang. They probably commit about 120 robberies which the police describes as very prolific and professional actions. The gang is also well-known for using knives, machetes, crowbars and screw diners which have a length of 18 inches, to make sure to threaten and frighten their victims and to ensure they got away with all the money.

Definers and identity are important for them so the Peckham Boys associate with the colour black, wearing of black clothing and bandanas, which are either worn around the lower face, neck or wrist. Because of the colour black the gang referenced Southwark as ‘Black Borough’.

The bandannas are worn like this:

Location of activities

The gang is located in whole London but mostly in London Borough of Southwark. The gang has its name from the district Peckham in southeast London. Most of the crimes which are committed by the gang are taking place in South London or at close places.

History
There are lots of members of the Peckham Boys so they have to be structured clearly. Many multiple are based gangs often just take their name from the local estates while others are also structured by their age. First these gangs were only composed of younger people and when the gang became rooted into the community the older members felt like they were the bosses of the younger. And so they acted. The “first” Peckham Boys existed in the 70’s and 80’s and they mainly took their names from the estates where they stayed.
There were:

• Acorn Boys (Acorn / Wood Dene estate)
• Night Jackyls / Gloucester Boys (Gloucester Grove estate)
• North Peckham Boys (North Peckham estate)
• Outlaws Crew
• Peckham Grove Boys (Peckham Grove estate)
• Yellow Brick Massive (Bells Gardens estate, blocks are yellow)

Every generation of the gang had changed names of the gangs because they wanted their gangs to be something special and rememberable. A lot of them were Jamaican, others had origins from Africa or Nigeria. The new names of the Peckham Boys were:

• Fire House Crew
• Gloucester Boys
• Spanglers
• Sunrise Crew
• Younger Peckham Boys

All gangs together which were listed were often just referred to collectively as the “Peckham Boys”. Due to the fact that the youngest generations always took their gang-names from their territories, they could be distinguished better from the others.

Those days the most well-known gangs of the Peckham Boys were The Fire House Crew (located near to North Peckham estate) and the Younger Peckham Boys. Those gangs were also closely connected. As it was already mentioned in some areas and crews there were The Nigerian parentage which dominated whilst in others there were mostly people with Carribean descent. The Younger Peckham Boys followed on from previous gangs and went on to become what the media has referred to as ‘Peckham Boys’ since the 1990’s.

There were a number of murders committed by the Jamaican in the Peckham area which mostly took place in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s. These crmininals were attributed to the Jamaican gang “Yardies”. The most dangerous member of them was Spangler Posse gunman Leon Virgo who wanted to gain attention with his acts. He is the man who is responsible for about 17 murders in the North Peckham estate.

Another very infamous Jamaican gangster was Delroy Denton. He was an illegal immigrant to Britain. Scotland Yard allowed Delroy Denton to stay in Britain being an police informer to fight the rising wave of Yardie related crime. But Denton was soon jailed after raping and killing Marcia Lawes in 1995. At his trial he was called a ‘Sex fuelled psychopath’ and ‘premier league danger to the public’.

By the early 2000’s the Peckham Boys was composed of:

• Older Peckham Boys (adults, aged 25+)
• Peckham Boys (olders, aged 19-25)
• Younger Peckham Boys (later teens, aged 15-18)
• Younger Younger Peckham Boys (aged between 13 and 14)
• Peckham Kids (as young as 7 or 8)

Often the Peckham Boys were linked with their predecessors, Fire House Crew and the Younger Peckham Boys were also closely linked with the Dulwich Boys / Circle Crew from the regions of Denmark Hill. The members knew each other because of the Archbishop Michael Ramsey School, where many of that generation attended.

The Peckham Boys were also leaders of various other factions around Peckham and used secret names such as Knuckles, Crimes, Pebbler, X-Fighter, Raver, Glamz and Bougz.
The youngest member, PK and YYPB of course did not participate in murders or other extreme crimes. They were mainly popular for their robberies and thefts and sometimes also in fighting with historical rivals from neighboring areas.

Nowadays the Peckham Boys are involved in more profitable crimes, for example robbing, taxing drug dealers and higher level robberies. They would also of course entrust the YPB members in certain tasks. Today the Older Peckham Boys do not join gang activities but they operate in more organized and less obvious criminality.

At the turn of the millennium there was a big argue within the African, the Carribean-descent and the British members but soon they got along with each other again. The names of the cliques were changing once again by the mid-2000s. To gain more popularity all gangs agreed to change their names into more noticeable names due their efforts to become rappers. Youtube and MySpace became the social arena where young rap artists and musicians were discovered by famous. Since then the new names got many meanings and were also a symbol for the rappers.

Today the Peckham Boys are known as SN1 (Spare-No-1) and were by now an older generation, the Younger Peckham Boys became SI (Shoot Instantly) and the Younger Younger Peckham Boys became PYG (Peckham Young Gunners) and so on.

Typical activities:

Murder on a innocent kid

An only 10-year-old Nigerian boy was killed in 2000 by two boys named Ricky and Danny Preddie (members of the Younger Younger Peckham Boys) which were only 12 and 13 years old at the time of the murder. The killed boy, Damilola was new at school and he slowly made some friends. Although he was smiling all the time there were signs that the young boy was bullying in his school. Three days before his death he came home and told his mother, that kids in school had beaten him up and that he had been called names. One day he went home from the library and was attacked by the two boys. He received a gash in his left thigh and collapsed after running to a stairwell. The boy almost bled to death after somebody finally called the ambulance. There were many trials but in 2006 the Preddie brothers were eventually sentenced for 8 years.

In memoriam to Damilola Tylor the musician Plan B wrote a song called “Kidz” in which he sings about the mentality of kids today.

Murder on a teenage athlete

There was also a brutal homicide on a popular teenager, Sylvester Akapalara, who was oly 17 years old. He was a talented athlete and middle distance runner and could have reached the top of his sports in the Olympics, his coach says today. The killer was David Nyamupfukudza. The guy actually wanted to kill two other boys in the attack in Peckham in 2010 and was shortly after jailed for life. Another man, Sodiq Adeojo, aged 20, convicted at an earlier trial, is serving at least 30 years for the murder. Both of them were members of the Peckham-GMG — or Guns, Murder, Girls — street gang.

Reasons for becoming a gang member

I think young people want to join a gang because they think it is cool to hang up with the members and doing forbidden stuff like stealing, dealing with drugs or beat up others.

At the beginning they might not know that they act like criminals and there will be consequences because most of them start to become a gang member at the young age of only 10 years.

The main cause why youths join gangs is that in the location where they live it is something like a norm to belong to such a gang. A good example for this is the city London, which is also known as the capital of the gangs. Over 6% of the teenagers of London are a member of a gang. There are also humans, who have got problems in their family-life and search for acceptance and love somewhere but also some of the youths, who like to belong to a clique because there is a lack of social activities available within a community.

People want to have a place where they feel home, a place to belong, but the real reasons why they want to be part of a gang can be different as the people themselves are.

My personal comment

Already as a little child I knew that there are many gangs all over the world. I saw them in TV or in the computer-games my brother played. But something I never thought was that kids at the age of 8 years also join a gang yet. As a girl it is also hard to understand why so many boys want to be a member of such dangerous gangs especially in London. I mean it is a huge risk of your life to become a member because once you are in a gang you will never get out!

The two statistics show exactly what I meant… There are so many youths nowadays who are under 18 and already proceeded!! I am absolutely not racist but you can see clearly that the majority of the crimes were committed by the black people, which shows that they are a very dangerous race, but this is just my opinion. If you take a look at the right statistic you will see again that sadly, London with its suburbs is the European capital where the most crimes are taking place.

I think to understand criminal people, you have to live in those areas yourself, and therefore I don’t want to judge anybody because there must be comprehensible reasons why people act how they act.