By Carl Jackson

Copyright birminghammail

Dead, languishing in jail, lying low or simply older and hopefully wiser. That is the likely fate for members of Birmingham’s feared Burger Bar Boys and Johnson Crew gangs. They no longer exist, according to the West Midlands Police force, which struggled for decades to dismantle them. READ MORE: What Birmingham cop said about Johnson Crew and Burger Bar Boys as killer starts 22-year stretch And yet, the Burgers and Johnsons continue to be name-dropped in court cases. Meanwhile, alarming gun violence persists in north Birmingham between newer ‘postcode gangs’ who have maintained the same territories as their infamous predecessors. The reality is the Burger Bar Boys and Johnson Crew still haunt their Handsworth and Aston heartlands like raging poltergeists. Extreme violence continues, albeit at the hands of much younger pretenders – more volatile, more unpredictable, but just as lethal. Gangs expert PC Gareth Evans told a recent homicide trial that the new generation likely did not know the context of the Burgers and the Johnsons. But they still put their lives on the line to ‘rep’ the respective postcodes associated with them. It is 40 years since the genesis of the two gangs, who rose from the fiery ashes of the Handsworth riots in 1985. That seminal event was the culmination of years of simmering tension between the police and the black community, who had settled in the area following the arrival of the Windrush generation. Immigration was a hot political topic, as it is today, and local gangs acted as vigilantes to protect their own community against the far-right National Front (NF). But there was nothing particularly noble about them. After the NF threat died down the gangs stayed together and turned to petty crime, particularly street robberies and thefts. The Johnsons were named after the Johnson cafe in Heathfield Road, Lozells , which has long since become a kebab shop. At some point a splinter gang formed with their nucleus being at a food outlet on Soho Road, Handsworth. They called themselves the Burger Bar Boys and they would go on to be the more notorious of the two rivals. Initially, they co-existed and by the 1990s they found themselves facing another common enemy. Jamaica gangsters known as the Yardies were involved in prostitution and drug trafficking. They developed a terrifying reputation for extreme violence and a callous disregard for life. A crackdown in London led to many Yardies being displaced and setting up in Birmingham. Ultimately, their troublesome presence quickly dimished as their members ended up either being arrested or fleeing back to their Carribbean homeland. But their absence left a void in the lucrative cocaine trade, which was filled by the Burgers and Johnsons. Inevitably, they became bitter enemies. Gun crime ended up being rampant in the north of Birmingham with multiple shootings every week. In 1999, gangster Cory Wayne Allen was killed. But despite an abundance of witnesses, no one talked out of fear of reprisal. The murder remained unsolved and the Burger Bar Boys in particular started to feel untouchable. In response, West Midlands Police launched Operation Ventara to tackle gun crime in the black community. Murder was retaliated with murder. But the gang war escalated to unprecedented levels in December 2022 with the fatal shooting of prominent Burger Bar member Yohanne Martin in West Bromwich. The Johnsons were suspected of being behind it and the Burgers sought swift revenge. On January 2, 2003 they carried out a drive-by shooting outside a salon in Birchfield Road, Aston, aiming to gun down their sworn enemies. Instead, a group of innocent girls celebrating the new year at an afterparty at the venue, were caught in the hail of bullets which burst out of the MAC-10 machine gun. Innocent friends Charlene Ellis, aged 18, and Letisha Shakespeare, 17, were killed. Their deaths prompted national outrage and immediately shot the Burger Bar Boys to instant infamy. Birmingham was bestowed with the unwanted tag of ‘UK gun capital’. But crucially, the wall of silence in the community that had been built up through years of intimidation, fear tactics and oppression, began to crack. Anonymous witnesses came forward, and suspects were identified and charged. One of them was Marcus Ellis, half-brother of Charlene, who had joined the Burgers following in the footsteps of his stepdad, despite his biological father being an OG Johnson. They went on trial at Leicester Crown Court which turned into a circus for six months. Armed officers patrolled the building while police helicopters circled ahead. All other cases were shipped off elsewhere and the jury was escorted to and from the building for their own safety. Even journalists covering the trial were followed and warned by police not to walk alone. In a legal first in the UK the key prosecution witness – a prisoner who identified the drive-by shooters – was granted full anonymity and his voice was disguised during the proceedings. Astonishingly, the Burgers shot people indiscriminately in a ploy to smoke out his identity. But in 2005, Rodrigo Simms, Marcus Ellis, Michael Gregory and Nathan Martin – brother of the gunned down Yohanne – were convicted and sentenced to life for the murders of Charlene and Letisha Simms was given a minimum term of 27 year,s having acted as the gang’s ‘spotter’ from inside the party. Ellis, Gregory and Martin, who were inside the drive-by car, were handed a minimum of 35 years each. The case was the beginning of the end for the notorious gangs as we knew them. Police deployed a team of mediators made up of ex-gangsters, teachers and church leaders, to bring the Burgers and Johnsons together and convince them their reign of terror was coming to an end. Either death or jail was their likely future if they continued. The Burgers had also been infiltrated by an undercover officer who gathered incriminating evidence against many of them. By the mid-2000s, dozens of members from the two gangs had been convicted for drugs and firearms offences, and hundreds of years’ worth of jail time had been handed out. In 2016, Burger Bar ‘Godfather’ Nosa Stephenson was jailed for more than 16 years for supplying guns. Two years later, notorious member Tafarwa Beckford, also known as ‘Dreads’ and the half-brother of popstar Jamelia, was jailed for murder. He had carried out the revenge shooting of Derek Myers outside Big Bang snooker club in October 2015. Beckford had also been charged over the deaths Charlene and Letisha only to be cleared due to insufficient evidence. He was ultimately sentenced to life with a minimum term of 32 years as police hailed his conviction as one of the most ‘significant’ in decades. But by that time, the newer generation of ‘splinter’ gangs had emerged, fighting over the same territories. On the Burger side of Handsworth, Hockley and Winson Green, the menacingly named Armed Response (AR) had become a lethal threat. Their allies included the Bandits and the grammatically questionable Get Round Der (GRD). On the Johnson side of Newtown, Lozells, Aston and Erdington the torch was passed to the likes of Get Money Gang (GMG), Goon Squad Army / Get Some Ambition (GSA), Get Back Gang, 9Boyz and the 23 Drillas. Goading each other on social media and in YouTube drill rap videos has become a prominent feature of the modern day turf war. And deliberate incursions into ‘enemy territory’ to engage in confrontation has been the go-to method for Gen Z gangsters to enhance their own reputation. The new kids on the block have gained notoriety in their own right. In 2016, AR member Reial Phillips was jailed for his part in a series of violent shootings the previous year in which six people were injured. His initial 27-year sentence was reduced to 20 years by the Court of Appeal. In 202,1 members of AR and GSA caused bedlam in the Arcadian after clashing at the Levana bar. Later that year, a 13-year-old boy was shot in the back and paralysed by a ‘slam gun’ – a homemade shotgun. His attackers from the AR gang wrongly suspected he was a member of the 9Boyz and targeted him for walking on to the wrong side of the road near Hockley Circus. In 2022, Sekou Doucoure, aged 16, was stabbed to death in Newtown. The one-time Nottingham Forest academy footballer had tragically fallen into gang culture as a member of GRD. He deliberately strayed into 9Boyz turf to provoke violence. Then, in February 2023, there would be a drive-by shooting with chilling similarities to that which claimed the lives of Letisha and Charlene 20 years earlier. From the back of a Nissan Qashqai, 9Boyz gangster Meshaq Berryman opened fire on a crowd at St Mary’s Church Hall in Handsworth. They had gathered for the wake of 17-year-old stabbing victim Akeem Bailey. Three people were hit by bullets, including two 19-year-old Armed Response members. A third teenager, with no known gang affiliation, was shot in the shin. Berryman, who was also a drug dealer, was found guilty of three counts of attempted murder. In January he was jailed for 24 years. It is perhaps only a matter of luck that his victims survived and the incident did not elevate the 9Boyz to the same level of notoriety as the Aston shootings had done for the Burger Bar Boys in 2003. Nevertheless, they remain firmly on West Midlands Police’s radar. Various trials in recent years have established that older gang members groom vulnerable children as young as 11 . Gripped by poverty, they are lured in by the seemingly well-intended offers of being bought something to eat and drink or nice clothes to wear. That escalates to cannabis use, which in turn evolves into cannabis dealing. Maybe they incur a debt, either a legitimate one or a manipulated one as a result of staged robbery. Before long, they are entrenched. Told to carry more serious drugs or weapons. Ordered to defend postcode boundaries like pawns in a game of chess. Threatened with violence to themselves or their families if they refuse. The cycle is seemingly endless. Are the Burger Bar Boys and Johnson Crew really extinct? The names and faces may have changed, but their poisonous legacy lives on.