TOWN TERROR
How ‘sleepy’ market town has become the UK’s ‘crime capital’ where schoolchildren aren’t scared of gunshots and drug dealers smuggle heroin in baby bottles
LITTLE Macaulay shrugs his shoulders, unfazed, as he stands at the scene of the latest shooting and admits: "Living around here you don't get scared, you're used to it."
But the schoolboy doesn't live on a crime-ridden London estate where knife and gun crime is so prevalent it makes headlines every day - he's actually from a market town in West Yorkshire which has become a secret "hotbed" of drug dealing, guns and violence, with some gangsters smuggling millions of pounds' worth of heroin in baby powder bottles.
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A new reveals the dark side to the market town of Huddersfield, where 200 firearm-related incidents have been reported in and around the town in less than four years.
Here, youngsters say they can get hold of guns with a simple phone call, and stabbings are commonplace, often the bloody result of drug turf wars.
News of the town's dark underbelly has been revealed after West Yorkshire was dubbed the UK's "crime capital" in December, with a Sun Online analysis showing residents there were most at risk of becoming victims of crime.
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Children no longer bat an eyelid at violence
While many Huddersfield locals are terrified to speak out, schoolboy Macaulay bravely recalls hearing gunshots in the most recent shooting, which happened in broad daylight.
It's a sound that would frighten most adults, never mind children - but the youngster tells BBC journalist Mobeen Azhar in Hometown: A Killing that he wasn't worried.
"There were gunshots down there, there were stabbings, there's everything round here," he says nonchalantly, standing at the crime scene in a Nike zip-up top.
Only three days earlier, a double stabbing had taken place nearby.
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Shootings and stabbings used as "scare tactics"
When asked by Mobeen what all the violence is about, Macaulay says: " It's scare tactics. To tell people you're not messing round here, that's basically it."
He continues: "People what have bought drugs and not paid them, and they've had a phone call to say that the person what owes money has been around a certain area, so they've gone round that area and just fired some bullets off."
Mobeen is stunned by the boy's knowledge of the crimes, and his relaxed attitude.
But Macaulay tells him: "It's Huddersfield, stuff like this happens practically every day.
"It's not a laughing matter really, because if you're with your kids and someone fires a bullet it could hit something and bounce off and still kill you. It's just how it is in Huddersfield, sadly."
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'Drug dealer' shot dead by police on M62 sliproad
Another boy, aged just 14, claims he earns £5,000 a month pushing cocaine and heroin for dealers, and adds: "Guns are easy to get, I can get a gun from a phone call."
But this isn't the West Yorkshire Mobeen remembers.
He grew up in Huddersfield - the birthplace of rugby league and former prime minister Harold Wilson - and remembers the town as a calm, friendly place with stunning Victorian architecture that never made the news.
But that all changed in January 2017 when car passenger - and self-declared 'Stud Badboy' - Yassar Yaqub was shot dead by police on a M62 sliproad near Huddersfield.
The father-of-two's death made headlines across the UK and sparked huge protests for "justice", with his devastated family claiming that he had been "killed unlawfully".
It would later emerge a gun, ammunition and a silencer had been found in the footwell of the car that office clerk Yassar was travelling in, and rumours spread of his "drug dealing".
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Today, Yassar's dad Mohammed continues to deny his son was involved in any criminality, and the Independent Office for Police Conduct (IOPC) is still investigating the shooting.
Despite the fact there had been nearly 100 firearms-related incidents in the Kirklees district (in which Huddersfield lies), in the two years before Yassar's death, Mobeen recalls how the fatal police shooting finally put his hometown in the national spotlight.
A 'sleepy' market town riddled with crime
He decided to go back there to report on the incident - but was met with a startling reality instead, as he discovered a hidden underworld of drugs and gang attacks.
"My once sleepy, northern hometown now seemed to be a hotbed of violence, gangs and drug dealing," says Mobeen, who has lived in London for more than a decade.
While filming the docu-series, Mobeen was horrified when a double stabbing occurred on the street he grew up on, followed by the shooting Macaulay heard several days later.
And sadly, this was just the beginning. "Over the following weeks and months, I saw more police tape in Huddersfield than I’ve ever seen in London," the journalist adds.
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From praying at mosque to selling drugs on streets
One hooded teen, appearing anonymously in the six-part series, suggests drugs are to blame, telling Mobeen: "The beef now mainly is - like, the majority is because of drugs."
Another male, wearing a scarf to mask his identity, adds: "Any time you find an area that is controlled by Pakistanis you get cheaper heroin."
Mobeen, described as a second generation British Asian by the BBC, discovers that British Pakistanis are "significantly overrepresented" in terms of convictions for intent to supply class A drugs in Yorkshire and Humber.
He is keen to point out the vast majority of British Pakistanis are law-abiding citizens. And of course, serious criminals come from all communities.
West Yorkshire residents most likely to be victims
WEST Yorkshire - home to Leeds, Bradford and Huddersfield - is the most dangerous place to live in the UK, a Sun Online analysis in December revealed.
It was found to be the police force area where residents are most at risk across a total of five victim-based crime categories - violent crime, robbery, sex offences, damage to property and theft of property.
Surprisingly - per head - London ranked just 10th in the blacklist. But it is thought the spread of London crime gangs into the suburbs - in so-called "county lines" cases - has sparked a surge in violence elsewhere.
The findings - which came from Home Office data - were proportional to the amount of people living in each force's area. West Yorkshire came top with 101.7 victim-based crimes per 1,000 people living there in the year up to June 2018.
Assistant Chief Constable Russ Foster, of West Yorkshire Police, told us at the time: “We as a force have experienced real rises in some areas of crime affecting our communities such as violence, burglary and robbery, similar to other forces nationally.
"Conversely we have seen a reduction in other areas of crime including vehicle crime and theft from the person. “
“We have experienced some of the worst cuts to our budgets when compared to other forces nationally at a time when criminality is not only increasing, but evolving in terms of seriousness and complexity and at a time when we have seen unprecedented increases in calls for service to our 999 and 101 system."
He meets one person who told him dealers would often sell drugs before praying at their local mosque. Afterwards, they'd head back out to the street to continue their trade.
Speaking to , Mobeen gave three reasons why he believes gun crime has risen by 50 per cent in West Yorkshire in the last decade, while dropping in other regions:
- Many people who moved to the area in the 1960s were from rural northern Pakistan, which lies very close to Afghanisation - the world's leading heroin producer
- Trade links between the UK and Pakistan "provide cover for the tiny majority of British Pakistanis that want to import heroin... I saw people importing heroin in everything from car engines to baby powder bottles"
- Yorkshire and Humber was this year found to have the highest unemployment rate in Britain. In many Pakistani households, boys are raised to believe they must be the breadwinner - but in the current job climate, this pressure to find work can have "unexpected consequences". This isn't helped by the fact most manufacturing jobs that British Pakistanis used to work in - such as in mills and factories - no longer exist
Referring to the last point, Mobeen adds: "You have a community of people reliant on industries that are no longer there, in the region that has the highest unemployment in the UK.
"So a minority of people will start importing."
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West Yorkshire Police it is aware of a national rise in drug deaths and that the region, like "all other areas of the country", has people addicted to drugs
It said enforcement and prevention work is being carried out by officers.
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But sticking pins in a map of Huddersfield - the town that raised and shaped him - to mark the scenes of various shootings, Mobeen is shocked by the scale of the situation.
In the suburb of Birkby, he's almost out of places to put pins in. But what's the answer? Mobeen concludes that people need to discuss and accept the extent of the problem - urgently.
"It's meant to be a sleepy little town," he says sadly. "It looks like a war zone."
- The full series of Hometown: A Killing
BBC trailer for Hometown looking at the shooting of Yassar Yaqub, gangs and drugs in Huddersfield
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