Examination of Witnesses (Questions 140
- 159)
TUESDAY 19 DECEMBER 2006
JASON LORD
COVER, HAYLEY
LITTEK, DEXTER
PADMORE, LEON
SIMMONDS, BIANCA
WAITE AND
JULIA WOLTON
Q140 Chairman: Can I ask how many
of you have personal experience of being excluded from school
at any time. That is four out of the five of you. What happened
in your case, Dexter?
Dexter: I do not know. I was excluded
for something petty really.
Q141 Chairman: How old were you when
you got excluded?
Dexter: About thirteen.
Q142 Chairman: What happened after
that?
Dexter: I got back to school,
but I did not get permanently excluded though.
Q143 Chairman: Leon.
Leon: I got permanently excluded
at the beginning of Year 11 for fighting, I believe it was, and
they sent me to a Pupil Referral Unit, and, to be honest with
you, I cannot really say that actually did help me, it was not
a better case scenario, if you see what I am saying.
Q144 Chairman: You may not have been
arrested, but had you been involved in breaking the law at all
before you got excluded from school?
Leon: Yes, I had.
Q145 Chairman: What sort of things?
Leon: Things like shop-lifting,
or theft and things like that.
Q146 Chairman: One more general question
and then we will move on to other members. Exclusion from school
has been raised as a big issue. Do you think there are any other
influences or pressures on you and your friends that lead to crime?
Bianca: In our community, because
there is so much violence and all the rest of it, obviously everybody
feels that, to keep safe, they have got to be involved in it.
It is like you cannot not be involved in it and not still be in
trouble, and so obviously that leads to crime, and you have still
got to be up there to have nobody else troubling you, that just
leads to crime alone and you need money and you need guns and
the rest of it, so it just builds up constantly.
Q147 Chairman: I do not want to take
the questions that other people ask, but I would like to follow
up on that point. Can you say a bit more about why it is so hard
to say, "I do not want to be part of that"?
Bianca: Because the pressure that
is on you, you want what they have got, and it is like now it
has got so worse where you cannot even go on to certain estates
without being in a certain crew, so that there is trouble. Either
you are with them or you are against them. That is the way they
look at it.
Chairman: I am going to take other people's
questions if I am not careful. Martin Salter.
Q148 Martin Salter: Looking through
the notes, a couple of you have been arrested. Jason, you were
stabbed. *** Anyway, my question is not about you individually,
it is: how common is it for people to carry weapons and why do
people do it?
Bianca: To feel safe.
Q149 Martin Salter: You mentioned
that it has almost become a kind of—
Bianca: It is just normal. It
is to feel safe. You cannot be having nice things and all that
walking through Brixton but yet you do not talk to nobody. You
have to be in somebody's crew to walk through Brixton and feel
safe and, therefore, you have to be somebody to be walking through
Brixton with your stuff but feeling safe. That is the point that
it has got to. You have got all these drugs dealers as well. That
is the point it has got to. Everybody wants to have what everybody
has got.
Q150 Martin Salter: Dexter, do you
know people who are happy walking around not carrying knives or
guns?
Dexter: Yes. It is not everyone
that walks around with guns and knives. I am just saying that
some people just walk around to protect themselves, not to harm
people but to protect themselves and to defend themselves.
Q151 Martin Salter: Do you not think
there is a danger that it just escalates: the more people start
carrying knives and guns the more other people start carrying
knives and guns and then, eventually, at some point, somebody
is going to use them, so it ceases to become a protection, it
actually becomes a threat, just the fact that you are armed?
Dexter: In some ways, yes, but
everybody wants to protect themselves.
Q152 Martin Salter: How much of this
level of violence is related to the drugs trade, how much of it
is related to the fact that, as Bianca said, people want what
other people have got?
Dexter: It is connected. Basically
it is related to it, it is connected to it.
Q153 Martin Salter: Hayley, what
do you reckon?
Hayley: I think it is all related
because a lot of people go into selling drugs to get what they
want, and in the same way someone will stab someone to get what
they want, and in the same way a person who sells drugs will carry
a knife for protection, if you know what I mean, so it is all
connected. It is all about getting what you want or what you feel
you need or what you cannot have.
Q154 Martin Salter: So carrying weapons
is almost essential if you are involved in the drugs trade, if
you want to at least be successful?
Hayley: Some people do feel it
is essential, yes, for their own protection.
Bianca: You cannot be a drug dealer
and making a lot of money but not carry any weapon.
Q155 Martin Salter: Why is that?
Bianca: Not even carry any weapons;
you have to be known to say, "They would." You might
not have to do it every day, but you have to have people thinking
that you would, because, obviously, other people will think, "All
right, you are not about nothing. You are making all this money.
Let us rob you."
Q156 Martin Salter: So, in order
to enforce your market share, in order to retain your status as
a drug dealer in the community, you either need to be carrying
weapons or you need to control people who do carry weapons.
Hayley: You need to be able to—.
Other people need to know that you are able to protect and defend
what you have got. Other people need to know they cannot mess
about with what you have got and your business. That is what people
need to know. It is not about always carrying weapons, it is just
about having that status that people know the line not to cross.
That is what it is about.
Q157 Martin Salter: The possession
of a weapon, or the ability to use a weapon, or the potential
to use a weapon is a means of establishing respect within the
community as well though?
Hayley: No.
Q158 Martin Salter: No?
Hayley: No, some people feel that
is the way to gain respect, but to gain respect by using a weapon
or carrying a weapon, you are gaining respect by people who do
not respect themselves or know what respect is.
Q159 Martin Salter: I could not agree
with you more, but it was what you were saying, Bianca, that to
be successful in the drugs trade you need, at the very least,
to demonstrate that you have got the potential to do violence
if necessary?
Hayley: To defend yours, yes.
Martin Salter: Thank you very much. Chairman?
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