Gangsta lyrics take rap for gun culture in Britain

By BRONWYN SELL Herald correspondent

A week after the shootings, 18-year-old Sophie Ellis still doesn't know her twin sister is dead.

Sophie, in a dazed state in Birmingham Hospital, keeps asking for Charlene, but their father, Arthur Ellis, can't bring himself to break the news.

"We are waiting until she gets a bit stronger. We keep telling her to concentrate on getting better."

Sophie was shot four times just after 4am local time on New Year's Day. She and Charlene were at a party at a hair salon on Birmingham's Birchfield Rd, with two cousins, Latisha Shakespeare and Cheryl Shaw, both 17.

Latisha's mother, Marcia Shakespeare, said later that her daughter didn't go out much. "The only reason she was allowed out on New Year's night was because the party had been organised by friends and family."

After five hours of partying, the twins went outside for air. Their cousins wandered out too.

The people who know where the shots came from aren't talking.

Neighbours counted seven, a pause and then the rattle of automatic gunfire.

It was the sub-machine gun that got the girls. Charlene was hit in the head three times, Latisha four times in the chest. They bled to death side-by-side, slumped against a graffiteed brick and concrete wall. Cheryl was shot in the hand.

It seemed at first that there was little in the girls' backgrounds to suggest they would die violently - other than the violence of the suburb where they lived. The twins were choirgirls, and sang at church with the private school-educated Latisha, who wanted to be a singer or artist and worked weekends in her mother's hairdressing salon.

It was the wrong place to be standing - the area is considered a frontline in the battle between two rival drug gangs, the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew.

There is nothing to suggest the twins were involved with the gangs, but they must have been aware of them. It emerged this week that their 23-year-old brother, Marcus, a Burger Bar Boys member, may have been involved in the shootout. He has disappeared and is thought to be on the run. Another brother is wound up with the Johnson Crew. Arthur Ellis has admitted that he spent six years in jail for manslaughter nine years ago, but insists he is a born-again Christian setting a good example for his daughters.

The witnesses are understandably scared, but police say the gangs themselves are cooperating to find the killers - one detective said that "even among gangs this has gone too far". But no arrests have been made.

At a press conference, Marcia Shakespeare appealed for help in catching her daughter's killer. "A part of me died when Latisha died. What could be worse? This is as bad as it gets. Please help. Please help. It has got to stop now."

The "it" she refers to is the gun-fuelled gang crime in the region.

West Midlands police say local gun crime has risen by about 50 per cent since 2000. But the issue has prompted a debate about the increase in gun crime nationwide.

The country's gun problem has been further emphasised by a siege in Hackney, east London, in which a gunman held a man hostage for 11 days, and is still holed up while the police figure out what to do.

Even schoolchildren are getting "tooled up". Several London schools have introduced rules for pupils carrying imitation firearms. One teacher told the Observer: "It's mainly the 13- and 14-year-olds who carry them. Once they get older than that they want real ones."

Former gang member Dave Courtney said guns used to be rare, but now they're whipped out at any sign of trouble. "And they shoot first because they know that more than likely, the other guy is going to be tooled up as well."

Lucy Cope's son Damian, aged 22, was shot dead in central London in July last year by a gang member who has since fled the country. She is now chairwoman of Southwark Mothers Against Guns, and has called for a minimum sentence of five years for possessing a handgun and a ban on imitation guns - which can be bought for £25 ($75) and modified to fire live bullets for a further £70.

"People are saying that years down the line this country will be like the Bronx. They're wrong - it's months down the line."

It's an exaggeration. Britain has a long way to go to catch up with the United States, where 10.58 people in 100,000 are killed each year.

The five-year sentence for carrying guns - it's now an average of 18 months - is already in the pipeline. However, Home Secretary David Blunkett, after pressure from the Bench, has given judges the power to impose more lenient sentences. Also, the British prison population is at a record high, and the jails would be unlikely to cope with a crackdown.

Further measures are under way to tighten controls on replica firearms and air guns, although there are no plans to increase the maximum sentence of six months for selling an illegal firearm to a teenager under 16.

Cope says the Government isn't going far enough, but Blunkett is probably being realistic. Events of the past few years suggest that kneejerk political reactions to crime sprees don't work. A public outcry against burglaries prompted a Government crackdown and a "three busts, go to jail" policy in 2000, but it has been used only six times since then.

Similarly, a pilot scheme which opened US-style night courts to deal with street crime is to be scuppered. It was intended to facilitate swift justice, but all that happened was messy and expensive not-guilty pleas and remands.

Blunkett has made comments linking "appalling" gangsta rap lyrics with gun crime. During a BBC interview he was played an excerpt from rapper Jay-Z with the words, "mo murder for the ROC gangs, ready to fire, one body, two body, three body, four I'm above the law".

The Home Office has ruled out further music censorship, but Blunkett has called for talks with key music industry figures to ensure music doesn't encourage violence.

Outspoken Culture Minister Kim Howells has gone further. He says the events in Birmingham are symptomatic of something very serious. "For years I have been very worried about these hateful lyrics that these boasting macho idiot rappers come out with."

He singled out controversial south London garage outfit So Solid Crew for criticism. Three of the crew's 30 members have been convicted or await trial on gun offences.

Metropolitan police Assistant Commissioner Tarique Ghaffur has also criticised the group, and blamed a "backdrop of music" for alienating young men and encouraging them to use weapons as fashion accessories.

Their comments were immediately pounced on as racist and unfair.

Conor McNicholas, editor of music magazine NME, said Howells didn't understand the culture.

"We have to be absolutely clear, the gun culture is a function of urban deprivation and not because of the music. The music reflects the experience of young people and doesn't create it."

A spokeswoman for So Solid Crew concurred. "Their music is reflecting society just as Robert De Niro reflected American gangster society in his film roles. They are out there trying to make a positive difference in British black culture."

The debate has filled the country's newspapers and TV screens for more than a week. But there's at least one person oblivious to the furore. She lies in a Birmingham hospital, waiting for her sister to turn up.