The reluctance of Salford residents to talk to the police after a seven-year-old boy and his mother were shot has made the task of ending a recent surge of violence even more difficult than during the “Gunchester” era of the 1990s, the city’s police chief has said.
Ch Supt Mary Doyle said disrupting violence in the Moss Side area of Manchester nearby had been easier because there were no longstanding crime families in the area, meaning officers had the support of parents.
She spoke outside Swinton police station, three miles from where Christian Hickey and his mother, Jayne, 29, were shot in the legs on their doorstep on Monday.
Police are hunting two gunmen over the attack, which has been linked to a gangland feud over the lucrative drug trade that has flared up following the murder of Salford’s “Mr Big”, Paul Massey, on his driveway in July.
Five days on, the motive for the “sickening and cowardly” attack remains unclear and the gunmen at large. Several police appeals for information have been met by a wall of silence from Salford residents fearing reprisals if they talk.
Doyle, of Greater Manchester police, said: “Salford’s very different to other places. We had a similar but in other ways completely different picture in Moss Side years ago.
“In terms of disrupting their activities, that was a lot easier because they came from not longstanding entrenched crime families so parents were with us.
“We had the mothers against violence and they were instrumental in helping us resolve those issues in that community, we haven’t got that here. Which is why we’re appealing to the women of Salford saying, actually, you lot have got to stand up and help us here. It’s your children potentially that are going to get shot – it’s you potentially that is going to get shot, your young children are now clearly in the picture.”
The repercussions of Massey’s killing began on the day of his funeral. At his graveside in Agecroft cemetery, Massey’s brother-in-law Stephen Lydiate had chemicals thrown in his eyes and was repeatedly battered around the head with the wooden supports used to lower Massey’s coffin into his grave.
An increasingly violent series of incidents thought to be linked to the murder has plagued Salford since then.
While police have struggled to get people to talk on Salford’s Ordsall estate, where Massey used to operate, one source said “everyone on the estate knows who the two shooters are”.
Police forensic experts are examining a bullet casing removed from Christian’s leg in the hope it could help identify the gunmen.
An emotive appeal issued by police on Thursday, including a picture of Christian in his hospital bed with a cuddly toy and his left leg bandaged, was designed specifically to tug at the heartstrings of Salford mothers. But by Friday police appeared no closer to catching those responsible.
Detectives investigating the recent shootings searched a number of addresses for the guns in dawn raids on Friday, however no firearms were recovered.
Seven men and a woman were arrested for offences including handling stolen goods and possession of class A and class B drugs with intent to supply. A “significant amount” of drugs was seized.
DI Alan Clitherow said: “This series of warrants is just one element of the continuing and relentless operation being orchestrated to tackle organised crime gangs in Salford. They came about as a result of the ongoing investigation into the recent spate of firearms discharges in Salford, including the horrific attack on young Christian Hickey and his mother Jayne.
“We wanted to show our communities that we are leaving no stone unturned in the hunt for those responsible for the abhorrent attack on an innocent child and his mother, and that we will not stand for the spate of shootings taking place on our streets in recent weeks.”
Monday’s shooting was the 21st known gun crime in Salford in the past 18 months – including nine since Massey’s death, of which two have been formally linked to the father of five’s murder.
For years, Massey was the head of a criminal gang and was believed to have operated protection rackets as well as having links to organised crime gangs across the UK. In 1999, he was jailed for 14 years for stabbing a man. His murder, which saw him shot four times in the chest, remains unsolved and his killer at large.
The scale of the challenge facing police is huge: there are an estimated 160 organised crime groups and 8,000 “troublesome families” operating across Greater Manchester. Unlike in Moss Side, where a group of enraged parents took a stand against gun crime after three young men were shot dead within two weeks in 1999, the relatives of gang members in Salford today are silent.
Patsy McKie, one of the bereaved parents who helped found Mothers Against Violence after her youngest son, Dorrie, was shot dead by three youths on a bike 16 years ago, is not surprised that police are encountering reticence.
“The community don’t trust the police. They tell them something and then see it on the news or somewhere. They think: I’m holding on to my life here. People are scared. They can see that happening to them,” she said.
Only days ago, McKie sat in the living room of a Salford mother who had a grenade thrown through her front door. Luckily, no one was injured. The incident was yet another in the string of tit-for-tat violence that has frightened many Salford families into silence.
“I’m sitting there shaking in my shoes, not being afraid but thinking what is happening here?” said McKie. “How can someone do that to another person? People are going to see that and be afraid to talk. You have to put yourself in their situation.”
Since Monday’s shooting, police have warned a number of Salford gangland figures that their lives are in danger. Young children, previously thought off-limits, were now the subject of “bespoke safeguarding plans” for fear they may be targeted, Doyle said.
Sources on the Ordsall estate said the streets of Salford had been “flooded” with heroin and crack cocaine since Massey’s murder. He had always asserted his opposition to class A drugs, sparking a bloody feud between two gangs fighting to get their hands on the huge profits those substances bring in.
For residents on the estate, the turmoil since July has taken them back to the dark days when shootings seemed an everyday occurrence. None of the people on the estate we spoke to wanted to be named. One man said: “Do you want me to be the next one shot?”
