Sterling’s gun tattoo has made him an easy target

MARTIN SAMUEL

Damian Cope died, a victim of a cycle of gun violence. He was at a park on a sunny afternoon in 2002 playing football when another youth arrived and began showing off a replica handgun.

Cope was worried for some children nearby and told him to put it away. The youth, believed to be andrew Wanoghu, thought he had been disrespected.

Later that day, Cope emerged from Brown’s nightclub in Covent Garden and was shot at close range in the lower abdomen, by the same gun, modified to fire real bullets.

at his trial, Wanoghu sat with his feet on a rail, smirking as he watched the CCTV footage. The case was dropped after two witnesses refused to testify.

On april 8, 2006, Wanoghu was killed on the order of a former friend, Delphon nicholas, then an inmate in Belmarsh prison. Wanoghu and nicholas were described as career criminals. The gun that killed Wanoghu had been used in at least seven other shootings.

Cope’s mother, Lucy, now campaigns tirelessly for her pressure group mothers against Guns. Yesterday she was quoted deploring a tattoo on the leg of an England footballer — calling for it to be erased or for him to be dropped from the World Cup squad.

Raheem Sterling says the tattoo commemorates his father, slain in a shooting in Jamaica more than two decades ago. it is, in the circumstances, an incongruous tribute — and if the ink is incomplete and a deeper message is to follow, as Sterling insists, then why show the unfinished work at all? Shorn of context, it is merely a portrait of a gun — and Sterling’s grin in the photograph he released displaying it does not suggest an air of great solemnity.

However, if this is how he wishes to remember his father, work in progress or not, that is his right. His body, his choice.

‘You own your own meat,’ as the comedian Doug Stanhope said. ‘if you own nothing else in the world, you own the meat that’s packing your bones. Throw cheese sandwiches down your top hatch till you’re so fat you have to buy two seats on Southwest airlines. That’s your prerogative.’

Equally, it isn’t for the rest of us to lecture a young man who lost his father to gun violence, on its seriousness. Sterling says he has never gone near guns, and, one imagines, to reach his level of achievement in football, he wouldn’t have had much time for gang culture, either.

as just about everyone who meets him testifies, Sterling is considerably more than the sum of his tattoos. mixed messages may be read into this latest statement, but if all young people worked as hard and as productively as Sterling, there would be fewer guns, fewer gangs and fewer young deaths.

Lucy Cole may be outraged by what she sees as clumsy symbolism or the glamorisation of a murderous culture, but in conversation, one imagines she would find Sterling rather impressive.

So, here we are again, football as the lightning rod for society’s issues. more than 60 people have been killed in knife or gun-related crimes in the capital in 2018, and at one time the murder rate exceeded new York’s. There’s the scandal. not tattoos.

Where are our police in this, our Government, our community leaders, our capital’s mayor? is this not a colossal failure of education and opportunity in need of urgent address? Far easier to heap it all on a successful footballer, on Sterling and his ink. Far easier to be outraged by one man, whose life is considered to epitomise the unthinking privilege of the modern footballer, than to address the complexities of urban life.

‘White people sell guns, that’s all right,’ said Chris Rock, another comedian. ‘Black rapper says “Guns” — congressional hearing.’

He had a point. You can buy guns in Walmart in america but rap albums carry warning stickers. maybe Sterling’s legs should, too. We live in an age of extremes, so if the condemnation of the individual, the cry for him to be exiled by England, is intemperate, the reaction is its reflection.

any hope of a conversation about the nature of influence, the glamour of gun culture, even the tired old role-model debate, was lost. ‘ Unique to this country to attempt to destroy our players’ morale before a tournament,’ wrote Gary Lineker. ‘it’s weird, unpatriotic and sad.’ meanwhile, his BBC employers were leading news bulletins with the story.

So, was that weird, unpatriotic and sad as well? it was said the criticism of Sterling was racially motivated, which ignores that similar levels of opprobrium have been thrown at Wayne Rooney, David Beckham and Jack Wilshere — or that Liverpool’s Loris Karius received death threats on the same platforms that are now widely appalled at the treatment of Sterling.

more realistically, Sterling gets disproportionate attention because Sterling publicly angled for a move from Liverpool to manchester City in 2015, becoming the archetypal greedy footballer in the perception of many. Since then, everything he does has come with a price tag.

if he flies a budget airline, if he buys expensive furnishings, if he visits Greggs or Poundland, if his car is dirty, if he is out very late, it is news and editorialised.

‘The hated one’ was how he described himself on social media, as much a commentary on public reaction as negativity in newspapers. Last December, 29- year- old Karl anderson was jailed for attacking Sterling in the street. ‘i hope your mother and child wake up dead in the morning, n*****,’ he said, a statement wrong on many levels.

Yesterday, many were joining the dots between media coverage of Sterling and its influence on racist thugs like anderson.

Yet we can’t have it all ways. if anderson is suggestible, then a young person admiring a footballer’s gun tattoo might be, also. it cannot be that a story about a gun tattoo might shape a view, but not the tattoo itself.

it may have been the opposite of Sterling’s intention but even he must be able to see that the image is open to interpretation — particularly unfinished. Then again, Christians wear crosses.

‘You think if Jesus comes back he ever wants to see a cross?’ Bill Hicks, our final comedian, asked. ‘That’s like going up to Jackie Onassis with a rifle pendant. Just thinking of John, Jackie, just thinking of John…’ Hicks then mimed the admirer making a rifle shot to show his love for the assassinated president.

Sephton Henry, a former gang member now working with the charity Gangsline to keep young people away from lives of violent crime, said he thought a white player would not have been criticised in this way — and that, because Sterling is black, his tattoo was immediately linked to gun culture. ‘There is a stereotype of guns and gun culture, and a stereotype of who carries out violent crime,’ he said.

That’s a fair point. Yet even removing all social complications around a gun tattoo, there is also simply a matter of football and the unnecessary pressure Sterling’s action could bring.

He explained that he shoots with his right foot, which is like a gun — the m16 automatic depicted. Except it isn’t, exactly. Sterling had a very good season but is not infallible in front of goal. manchester United can vouch for that.

This might invoke cruel comedy if he turns out to be carrying a pea- shooter when it matters at the World Cup — taking a penalty, or one on one in front of goal.

Gareth Southgate, his manager, talked of advising players to stay off social media if he felt they could be adversely affected. might this not have been a case in point? Would publicising the metaphorical deadliness of his right foot have been something Southgate would have advised against, had he known?

it’s a slow news week, too, so this overblown crisis — Rihanna also has a gun tattoo, by the way — may hang around for a few days yet. if anything, the collateral damage will be Southgate, who is sure to get buttonholed on the subject at his next public appearance, required to pick his way through another moral maze.

He has already dealt with social media etiquette, pre-tournament holidays, mobile phones at dinner, drinking, discipline and all manner of issues peripheral to winning a football match.

He must be wondering how big the management manual needs to be if he is to have an adequate response for that moment when a player inadvertently strays into the national panic around gun crime, through the medium of body art. Bet he can’t wait for the football to start, whether England pack heat or not.

Where are the police, the Government, the mayor? Simpler to pin it on one young player