This is our story. It’s behind a paywall, but here is a look at how locals armed with clippers are trying to stop gang violence in North London:
“Mumutlu, 35, who is originally from southern Turkey, is the head teacher at Restyle Barbering Academy in Haringey, a borough where an estimated 30,000 people of Turkish descent live. In its nine years of business, it has trained more than 500 men and teenagers in barbering courses — dozens of whom were self-proclaimed gang members “looking to escape” bloody turf wars over the capital’s heroin trade.
North London has been the backdrop to a decades-old feud between two rival Turkish and Kurdish gangs: the Hackney-based Bombacilar and the Tottenham Boys. The gangs have been battling to control a heroin supply route via Turkey and the Middle East, resulting in at least ten violent incidents since 2002.
It is understood that more than 95 per cent of the UK’s heroin supply chain is run by various Turkish groups in north London. More than £1 million worth of heroin has been seized by police in raids on cafés along Green Lanes alone over the years.
“We don’t just teach people how to cut hair, but we show them how to open their own legitimate business — how to act. So much of it is a lifestyle change,” explains Mumutlu, in a shop just off Green Lanes.
“We get parents calling us up and asking us, ‘please take my son, please help him’. They just want to give them better lives.””
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This is our story. It’s behind a paywall, but here is a look at how locals armed with clippers are trying to stop gang violence in North London:
“Mumutlu, 35, who is originally from southern Turkey, is the head teacher at Restyle Barbering Academy in Haringey, a borough where an estimated 30,000 people of Turkish descent live. In its nine years of business, it has trained more than 500 men and teenagers in barbering courses — dozens of whom were self-proclaimed gang members “looking to escape” bloody turf wars over the capital’s heroin trade.
North London has been the backdrop to a decades-old feud between two rival Turkish and Kurdish gangs: the Hackney-based Bombacilar and the Tottenham Boys. The gangs have been battling to control a heroin supply route via Turkey and the Middle East, resulting in at least ten violent incidents since 2002.
It is understood that more than 95 per cent of the UK’s heroin supply chain is run by various Turkish groups in north London. More than £1 million worth of heroin has been seized by police in raids on cafés along Green Lanes alone over the years.
“We don’t just teach people how to cut hair, but we show them how to open their own legitimate business — how to act. So much of it is a lifestyle change,” explains Mumutlu, in a shop just off Green Lanes.
“We get parents calling us up and asking us, ‘please take my son, please help him’. They just want to give them better lives.””
Read more here: [https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/barbers-v-gangs-the-fight-to-save-north-london-from-heroin-wars-6bm8kwlvt](https://www.thetimes.com/uk/crime/article/barbers-v-gangs-the-fight-to-save-north-london-from-heroin-wars-6bm8kwlvt)