BIRMINGHAM’s drill-inspired gang war has seen gun crime soar in the city as the underworld figures then brag about their deeds online.
Armed Response- a notorious underworld crew is bringing blood to Birmingham’s streets and letting everyone know about it.
The gang formed in the 2010s, with police nabbing a 20-year-old rapper in 2016 who had been baiting his rivals and “gloried in the shootings” through drill music videos on YouTube.
“When we come round in that truck, them boys there they dash,” rapper ‘Lynch’ says in one video, describing an attack on another group.
Armed Response’s turf is understood to be on the west side of the A34 and they wear the colour red.
Lynch, real name Reial Phillips, was initially jailed for 27 years in 2016 for his role in the 2015 shootings, but later had his sentence cut to 20 years.
They are a splinter group of the black Brummie gang Burger Bar Boys, a 1980’s crew who controlled the crack cocaine trade in the West Midlands and have now become the subject of a BBC podcast.
The increase in gang violence in the city has mirrored its other problems, with cuts to social services over the last decade and the Labour-run council going bankrupt earlier this year.
In 2015, the city of a thousand trades was ravaged by a series of shootings fueled by the rise in drill music, Birmingham Live reported.
The war left eight people with gunshot wounds, including a 16-year-old boy who was shot in the back outside a barbecue party.
And in 2017, the Burger Bar Boys and the Johnson Crew were banned from parts of Birmingham in a landmark ruling.
One gang member, Louis Clarke, 19, was jailed for life last week after an innocent 13-year-old boy was shot in the spine, leaving him permanently paralysed.
The gangster was the fourth jailed for the 2021 shooting.
Another of the foursome, Tafique Thomas, had pulled the trigger on the homemade ‘slamgun’ shotgun after the gang had chased the youngster through an underpass.
The boy was only chased and shot because he had walked into the gang’s territory on his way to get food with friends.
A third member then rapped about the shooting in a video released online in the subsequent days and appeared to express regret the boy survived.
“Hands on my head, now I’m f****** stressed, when I heard my man ain’t in a casket,” Zidann Edwards rapped.
The victim’s mother labeled Clarke and the other gangsters “cowards” for the callous crime against her son.
Armed Response marked an evolution in the Birmingham criminal underworld concurrent with the popularisation of drill music from the south side of Chicago in the early 2010s.
Drill-inspired gangs were also forming around the world, like Western Sydney’s OneFour in 2014, which recently starred in a Netflix documentary.
The new breed are willing to publicly attack their rivals and brag about their violent acts in their homemade drill numbers.
In 2021, violence erupted again in Birmingham with a brawl at a nightclub between Armed Response and their rivals, Goon Squad Army.
Goon Squad Army are themselves a splinter gang, emerging out of the Johnson Crew.
Goon Squad Army member Rikardo Reid, known as ‘Stardom’, was performing at the Levana bar when an Armed Response member spotted him.
A fight ensued with a bottle being thrown and Reid avoiding being stabbed by Armed Response’s Shayne Campbell after Campbell slipped, giving Reid enough time to escape through a fire exit.
Six men were convicted for the melee, including Reid, who had tried to flee the country. He had already been convicted for selling drugs after a 2009 police sting.
Then, only two and a half months later, the four Armed Response gangsters tried to kill the 13-year-old in the brutal underpass attack.
Police released CCTV footage of the men leaving the underpass and running to a getaway car.
Gun offences in the region have also rocketed 86% – with 1,089 gun crimes in the 12 months to March recorded, up from 584 the previous year, the Mirror reported.
West Midlands police launched Operation Target in response to the deteriorating situation in the city, as Birmingham surpassed London as the gun capital of the UK.
100 officers have been placed into a gun squad to investigate gun recovery and discharges.
Operation Target has also seen success, West Midlands police say, with an ammunition maker and other organised crime figures nabbed as well a reduction in the number of guns fired.
