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Drug gangs feud summit talks to be staged
COMMUNITY leaders have called an emergency summit next week in the wake of three murders and dozens of shootings blamed on feuds between Turkish drug-dealing gangs.
Liberal Democrat councillor Meral Ece said the cross-party, cross-borough meeting would bring together leaders and police from four boroughs to discuss how to tackle the violence.
Police borough commanders of Islington, Hackney, Enfield and Haringey, along with Turkish councillors and other leaders from each borough, will attend talks at Hackney Town Hall on Friday.
Cllr Ece said: “This problem with the Turkish community, racketeering and drug-dealing, has been endemic over many years and is not new. “People get dragged in but at the bottom it’s these drug-dealing gangs. It’s got to be tackled. We can’t have these things going on.”
She said law-abiding, hard-working people were falling prey to racketeering groups while some young men were being dragged into a life of violence and crime. “We are very concerned,” she added. “We want to try to stop these people’s lives being blighted.”
Her comments follow the gunning down of Clerkenwell shop worker Cem Duzgun, 21, killed as he watched a football match in a Clapton social club at the start of the month.
In March, shopkeeper Ahmet Paytak, 50, was murdered by a gunman as he closed his shop in Holloway. He was described by police as an innocent victim, a hard-working family man caught in the crossfire between warring gangs. His son Huseyin, 21, was shot in the attack but survived.
Foot patrols by armed police – launched last week and understood to be concentrated in Tottenham and Green Lanes, as well as in Brixton – were introduced to tackle the gangs.
A drop in violence between two gangs, the Bombacilar and the Tottenham Boys, has led Metropolitan Police commander Steve Kavanagh to say the patrols have had an impact. “We have got them reeling because we are showing the levels of violence are not being tolerated,” he said. |
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