'SNITCHES GET STITCHES'
Vigilante residents confront drug dealers wreaking havoc on streets as cops are ‘nowhere to be seen’
One resident who confronted a gang said they threatened to stab him and warned: 'We know where you live'
RESIDENTS are fighting back against drug dealers operating blatantly outside their homes - because they claim the police are "nowhere to be seen".
Brave locals in East London have defied violent threats from the crooks to keep on recording their activities on phone cameras and passing evidence to cops.
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Vigilante groups in two districts plagued by dealers are featured on a BBC Inside Out investigation this evening.
The leader of one, in Wapping, says he has been warned after challenging a gang invading his neighbourhood: "Snitches get stitches."
Another group call themselves the Columbia Road Cartel after the trendy area of Bethnal Green which is home to the famous flower market.
They have erected joke street signs and parking notices with slogans such as "Drug dealers only" and "crack pick-up point".
Desperate residents have filmed numerous drug deals and passed the footage to cops.
They threatened to stab me - they said 'snitches get stitches'
Zamir Crouch
Jonathan Moberley, who is organising the fightback in Bethnal Green, said: "It's happening all over here, all the time, day and night.
"The drops happen by cars arriving, always at great speed. The users will gather round, do the deal through the car window, and the car will race off.
'The incentive to do this is to try and kick the authorities into taking some real action."
Local Jason Needham is not part of the group but hailed their efforts for slashing crime.
He said: "I thought 'good on 'em' whoever it was who put the signs up.
"This specific street is radically reduced. It's a way that the community took ownership and tried to make a point."
The Weavers ward had 171 reported drug offences, 118 robberies, 465 violent and sexual offences and 934 reports of anti-social behaviour in the year December 2017 to November 2018.
Confronting the gangs
Meanwhile Zamir Crouch is part of a separate group filming drug deals in Wapping and sending the footage to the police and council.
He has even challenged the gangs face to face after finding hundreds of spent canisters of "hippy crack" nitrous oxide.
One thug annoyed at being exposed warned him menacingly: "You know what will happen. We know where you live."
He told the BBC: "They threatened to stab me - they said 'snitches get stitches'.
"I got an acknowledgement from the police that they've seen the video that I emailed. I haven't heard anything back from them. Nothing at all, and this is three months ago."
He is trying to crowdfund the £80,000-a-year he and his neighbours need to hire private security patrols to replace the cops he says are absent.
The St Katharine's and Wapping ward had half the crime level in the other district last year, with 50 reported drug offences, 52 robberies, 246 violent and sexual offences and 590 reports of anti-social behaviour.
Chief Supt Sue Williams of the Metropolitan Police told the BBC: "We do an awful lot to combat drugs in this borough.
"What we're not very good at is telling people what we actually do."
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Tower Hamlets Council said it has been working with police, with more than a hundred properties raided and at least 30 people jailed.
The council's Alun Goode said: "We build an intelligence picture up about those particular vehicles and we look at every opportunity we can to stop them.
"So what we are going to do now is track this vehicle and at the same time contact our police colleagues. A number of these officers are council funded. We're doing an awful lot of work around this particular problem."
The investigation can be seen on BBC One (London) tonight at 7.30pm.
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