Nine seized as armed police smash gang in blitz after teen deaths
SCOTLAND Yard smashed a suspected major criminal network yesterday as armed police swooped on the alleged leader.
The wealthy 28-year-old was one of nine arrested in dawn raids involving 200 officers to round up leading figures in the MDP – Money, Drugs, Power – gang.
Police seized a Czech-made Skorpion machine pistol, a handgun and ammunition, plus heroin, crack cocaine and cash.
MDP gangsters are notorious for using children as young as 12 as couriers, and a boy of 14 was detained on suspicion of conspiracy to supply class A drugs.
It is believed MDP drug dealers made up to £20,000-a-week, or just over £1million-a-year.
The operation followed a sixmonth investigation by the elite Metropolitan Police Viper unit.
It came days after London was hit by a wave of murders of teenagers and young people, many of them apparently gang-related.
Last month the killings London outstripped New York.
Met Police Commissioner Cressida Dick took part in the raid on in the home of the alleged MDP leader in Greenford, west London.
The suspected gang leader drove an Audi S5 and holidayed in a millionaire’s resort in Dubai, police said. Eight homes, in Greenford, Brentford, Northolt, Fulham, Earls Court and Crystal Palace were raided during Operation Todhabi yesterday.
Six males aged 14, 17, 28, 29, 30 and 34, and two women aged 34 and 49, were held on suspicion of plotting to supply class A drugs.
The 30-year-old man was also A man is led away in handcuffs after a raid in Northolt, north-west London, yesterday. Left, the Czech-made Skorpion machine pistol seized during Operation Todhabi being questioned about possession of firearms and ammunition.
In 2007, five MDP members stabbed gifted student Kodjo Yenga, 16, to death after chasing him in Hammersmith.
Two boys, one aged 14, were found guilty of murder at the Old Bailey. Three others were convicted of manslaughter.
Meanwhile, in the Yard’s 56th murder probe this year, a man was found dead at a flat on the Isle of Dogs, east London, yesterday. A woman in her 20s was arrested.