Not sure too many of you guys will have heard of Colin Gunn, hails from Nottingham, England..small city but he ran it through murder and intimidation, had an army of shooters, him and his brother were huge drug traffickers, had policemen on his pay roll, was said to have killed upto 20 people, depending on who you ask and 100 non fatal shootings.

His downfall was in 2006 I believe when he ordered the massacre of an elderly couple who were in witness protection, the couples son had shot dead a friend of Colin Gunn's nephew, got life imprisonment.

Absolute brutal man, glad to have him off the streets of my city! Still runs his organization from prison, but it's been reduced in size by at last half, his brother is the acting head

Here's a documentary on him, doesn't really focus on much of his other activities, just on this murder case.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OZLh2_OgNuw

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-...man-rights.html

Aaaah the new style of British gangsters...
Gone are the old school mobsters that still had something resembling a moral code, in are the new style moralless brutal hoods. They have been sprouting up in smaller cities like Nottingham, Bristol, Essex,...but also Liverpool and Greater Manchester.
Sick that he hunted down the parents of someone he fell out with. These people did nothing wrong.

Exactly, the old school gangsters would never target innocent people like that, I remember my dad telling me the news about the couple being killed, they only lived 5 minutes from me in a place called Carlton, madness.

Well the old school British mobsters already was nearly extinct by the beginning of the 90s. Begin 90s the younger, brutal groups largely involved in the drug trade and money laundering ( mostly through porn shops) were on the rise in the white working class areas of the East End and Southeast London ( regions were the majority of the estates were already mainly populated by blacks, Turks or Bangladeshis back then ), Essex,...These groups don't have the same media coverage the Krays had. In fact, of most of those groups no one has ever heard. But no matter how you put it: the old, recognizable firms are long and gone. The new, sneeky groups are probably here to stay.
Ever heard about the Hunt firm from London's East End ? They were succesful in the 90s and till this day they are still active, although some of the members have become 'legitimate businessmen'. Read some stories about them, sick stuff.

90s was much worse than it is today, my city Manchester was really bad in the 90s, now its all yuppy, nice restaurants, shops etc. Also you had the firm operating in the 90s, Pat Tate, Tony Tucker. The Adams family too was more active in the 80s and 90s than now. Generally crime is down in the UK, Murders in London have dropped under 150 in recent years, it maxed out in about 03 at over 200.

The Adams Family is still active in america

Yeah crime has sunk dramatically. In the 90s you saw the rise of the drug phenomenon. Rivals were picking each other off left and right. Murder rates are low. However that's not to say there isn't crime anymore. There probably still are shady deals going on, but it isn't as all over the place as it was in the 90s. Things are steady now, but one day it will inevitably get worse again and then it will get better again. Probably the nature of crime. The European economic crisis won't really help in that regard.
In Europe in general crime rates are lower nowadays. Italy for instance experienced a peak in mafia violence in the early 80s. Nowadays the murder rate in Italy is even lower than the murder rate in the UK.

Ill be honest im a kind law abiding person Arnold born and bread but i can see that order on the streets is needed something old school had gentleman's word and ethics. its a safer place with them

On a semi-related note. This whole devolution of the morality of British gangsters. By which I mean that prior they had a different set of moral standards, albeit very alien from conventional morality. I digress.

It remind me of the Melbourne gangland killings. A new breed of savage gangster motivated by the drug trade picking up at around the same time as what you guys are describing. Hell, it's happening all over really. The common denominator seems to be the narcotics trade.

Either these guys are dipping into their own supply. Or the money from drugs is so massive that it makes crooked guys do even more fucked up shit. Mostly cultural if I had to guess tho.

Does anybody know who is this "Taxman" guy who is said to be the n.1 criminal in Nottingham according to this article?

http://www.leftlion.co.uk/articles.cfm/title/hoods--the-gangs-of-nottingham/id/2427#.UUjMHxyyBJk

It's said here that people who live there have a good idea who he is although he isn't named for legal reasons.

His name is Brian Cockerill-full video on youtube about him by journalist Donal MacIntyre

They was just drug using brutes who bullied there way around, they where definitely feared but nobody respected them that's for sure.The streets are better off without them.. I have read the book has its my home town so a lot of the things i can relate too.

A school friend i knew was the getaway driver for a Jewellery store murder which happened in Arnold and he was given 10 years..