Witness Intimidation Revealed: Stitches For Snitches - C4 Dispatches

In August the Metropolitan Police opened their 100th inquiry into a violent death this year. Serious violence is rising across the country. Knife crime has risen by 22% and murders are up by 44%. It costs over a million pounds to investigate each murder
While crime is rising detection has fallen by a third. In 2015, 93% of murders were detected, down to 66% in 2017. Dispatches investigates the increasingly sophisticated use of social media platforms, with a particular focus on witness intimidation which is clearly a major factor.
Livvy Haydock explores the dark world of witness intimidation, and finds a sophisticated and highly effective system of menacing violence amplified and driven by social media.

Gang members discussing social media intimidation:
Gang members use social media for a wide variety of purposes, but Dispatches has discovered how it can be used to frighten witnesses against testifying. 
Dispatches found that gangsters post witness statements on social media with threatening messages to intimidate them into not testifying. They also post images of witnesses and encourage their contacts outside jail to physically threaten suspected snitches.
Dispatches were put into contact with young gangsters inside jail who give insight into how they use technology to assist their criminal activity:

LIVVY:    can I ask you like where are you calling me from right now?
MAN:                 Yeah, right now, I’m in jail. I’m in Brixton.
MAN 2:   Hello, I’m the hitter (laughs)
LIVVY:    You’re the hitter. OK. How do you have access to phones in prison?
MAN:                 you have access to anything you want in jail bruv. Jail is like endz on the streets.
LIVVY:    but where did you get your phone from?
MAN:                 me? I got it, I got it off a screw
LIVVY:    You clearly have internet access as well
MAN:                 always, always
LIVVY:    and your crimes were they ever involved with gang activity?
MAN:                 yeah course, selling crack, and I love it, Still got the youngies out there, penging it.
(Youngers' is slang for the teenage dealers and couriers used by gangs to sell drugs)
LIVVY:    So you’re operating a business from inside?
MAN:                 Yeah, you can do whatever you want, come on realistically. Like, you can download your bank app on your phone. Sell drugs all day in here. And do your transactions yourself, you can do    whatever you want, it’s really not that hard. Order stuff.
LIVVY:    Do you mean contraband?
MAN:                 Yeah, course. More phones, drugs, knives. Do you know what I’m saying? Intimidating witnesses
LIVVY:    Sorry doing what?
MAN:                 intimidating witnesses
LIVVY:    Can you effect, kind of, witnesses from inside prison that are on the outside via like social media?
MAN:                 of course you can! I mean come on; you got an iPhone you can do anything you want
LIVVY:    in terms of like social media what other stuff do you have access too. What is like Facebook and that kind of thing?
MAN:                 anything. Facebook, Instagram, snapchat, facetime, WhatsApp. All of that.
LIVVY:    there’s something I’ve seen on Instagram, pop up a few times now is like people who are being called snitches and that getting named and shamed on Instagram. You come across that?
MAN:                 yeah it happens all the time.
LIVVY:    is it something you’ve ever been involved in?
MAN:                 ermm no comment…My battery is about to die but do you want to call my mate he’s in a different jail init. Do you want to call him? I’m going to message you his number now yeah

The man Whatsapp’d a telephone number for a contact at another prison:
LIVVY:    Hello
NATHAN:            I’m Nathan, yeah.
LIVVY:    Yeah and where are you ringing me from Nathan are you in prison
NATHAN:            I’m in prison. I’m in HMP Peterborough right now
LIVVY:    so can I ask what kind of thing you’re in for
NATHAN:            I’m in for possession of firearm right now. It’s only a little light firearm case, could have been worse. The hustle don’t stop man.
LIVVY:    so when you say the hustle don’t stop do you think having access to the internet via a smart phone does that mean that you can carry on business in your cell.
NATHAN:            you can carry anything on, you can carry on our businesses, carry on our relationships, see our families, you know.
LIVVY:    Do you post anything on social media, do you ever do that?
NATHAN:            (in the background) Hold on, hold on.
(to Livvy) Snapchat, Instagram,
(NATHAN TAKES ANOTHER CALL IN THE BACKGROUND)
LIVVY:    I didn’t know you’d be so busy.
NATHAN:            Yeah, we’re always busy.
LIVVY:    Do you know like loads of stuff that’s going on on the street, like do people inform you what’s going on outside prison a lot
NATHAN:            of course it don’t stop

Police and social media:
Criminals' use of social media to coerce and control is something the police are slowly waking up to. But criminologists studying gangs have seen the use of social media become a key strategy.
Dr Simon Harding, a leading expert on gang culture, Associate Professor of Criminology University of West London:
“It kind of undermines the whole value and purpose of being in prison. If they’ve access to a telephone it means the walls and the boundaries are, in effect, not there…
Imagine if you’ve been a witness in a court case and you suddenly receive a telephone call from somebody who has been convicted at court and they’re actually in prison and they’re ringing you on a telephone from prison and you’re sitting in your living room, you get this phone call, you would be pretty terrified, I think”
Gwenton Sloley, Government advisor and founder of London Gang Exit,
“A lot of prison officers are on minimum wage, first of all, so we can’t just look at how someone’s intimidating someone from prison, we need to look at the infrastructure of how that’s been allowed to happen, so a lot of these prison officers are little young ones that have come straight out of school or college and now they’re looking after people in prison. They’re gonna do whatever that person says, it won’t take a lot to groom that prison officer, before you know it the prison officer bringing in drugs and mobile phones and you’re being able to intimidate your witness comfortably.”

Abraham Badru case study:
In 2007 Abraham Badru, aged 14, rescued a girl from a gang rape, he was a key witness picking out the rapists at an identification parade. He was asked by the police to attend court as a witness, and started receiving threatening messages.
His mother didn’t want him to give evidence, but was told by the police that she would be perverting the course of justice and could therefore be arrested and imprisoned herself.
He was commended for his bravery post-trial by the police; however he was still receiving threatening messages. Abraham moved to Bristol to study for his degree and subsequent masters. When he returned to Hackney to visit his mother in March 2018 he was shot dead.

No one has been arrested or charged with his murder.
DCI Noel McHugh, Metropolitan Police Homicide Command,
“First of all, there are no words that can ever describe what a family have gone through when they have lost someone to the hands of another person and that is compounded when there is a silence in the community. I just want to reassure Ronke [his mother] that we are working so hard to get you the justice that you deserve. There are 3 or 4 people who were there immediately before or after the shooting- the murder. And they haven’t come forward.”
Gwenton Sloley,
“A lot of the time the witnesses are offered fire proof letterboxes or a panic alarm, that’s not gonna stop someone coming through your door or stabbing or shooting you in the street, so it comes down what resources the police really have to protect witnesses.”

The reality of social media usage:
Tanya, a girl gang member,
“Well, most of the time these people get killed, kidnapped, beaten up, badly, not just beaten up and then you can go home and sleep and then you’ve got bruises, not that type of beating up. I’ve seen on Instagram and on Facebook- they put people - other people’s picture on there.
They can definitely get to you. That’s - that’s what’s been happening all the time. The people that have to witness against you, snitch on you, they most of the time they don’t get away with it. if you know these people that you snitch on, or you witness against them there’s always going to be a problem whatever they find. If they come to your house or social media, it doesn’t matter, they will find you. If you decide to snitch- that could be the end of your life.”
Dispatches has found witness statements being published online
Dr Simon Harding,
“This is a way of the gang communicating to their peer group, to rivals and to the wider community that they have a form of power, control and authority over the area or over other individuals. The whole issue of policing around social media is a challenge, and it’s very new for everybody and I think perhaps the police are not fully on top of this yet – there’s a very low level of reporting of this type of thing so the full extent of it is perhaps not realised”
Gwenton Sloley,
“You can virtually intimidate someone and threaten someone online, and you can also setup a fake profile to terrorise your victims. It’s very hard to track back that profile page to who it really is…”

Response from the Metropolitan Police:
DS Mike West, Metropolitan Police Social Media Lead:
“Obviously, we need to improve our technology, our ability to scan and look for elements of risk on social media platforms. We’re never going to be able to police the internet, obviously the volume of content which goes on to each platform every day is massive. We are seeing a transition from that online content into real life offline violence.”

Response from the Home Office
Victoria Atkins, Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Crime, Safeguarding and Vulnerability,
It’s for the police to identify when there are risks to people and there are measures they can use to protect people, um, I’m concerned to hear about the witness statements, and I think again, it’s this understanding that if something is illegal offline, it’s also illegal online, so any sorts of attempts at intimidation, frankly, whether it’s online or offline is irrelevant, they are intimidating a witness.

Dispatches approached the social media companies for comment, they all declined an interview.