POLICE: DAVID GUNN’S CRIME STORIES ARE ALL 20 YEARS OLD
POLICE have reacted to a controversial podcast featuring notorious former crime cartel boss David Gunn,
Gunn has lifted the lid on how he and his brother Colin used to run the Bestwood area of Nottingham where “police didn’t come”.
Now he has urged people to stay away from a life of crime and avoid making the mistakes he did, while also sharing memories which landed him in prison for about 20 years.
Gunn was speaking to Shaun Attwood, another ex-prisoner who now runs his own true crime podcast.
Colin Gunn remains in prison after being sentenced in 2006 to 35 years for conspiring to murder Joan and John Stirland in Trusthorpe, near Skegness.
David Gunn says that growing up he got “very handy” with his fists and used to fight other schools, then went into burglaries, robbing garages and eventually drugs, which is where the money was at the time. He added that his mum used to hit policemen with shoes when they tried to talk to her sons.
He admitted biting off one man’s eyelids and lips, after he had drunkenly knocked into a table with his nine-year-old daughter on before “belting her in the eye”. When Gunn was told about what happened over the phone, he headed straight there and scarred his victim for life. He was sentenced to four years and nine months in prison.
Now Nottinghamshire Assistant Chief Constable Rob Griffin has said: “I’m really pleased to say the stories people will have heard in this podcast are almost 20 years old.
“Back then Nottingham did attract the unhelpful nickname ‘Shottingham’ but those days when Nottingham had a gun crime reputation are way behind us and are now in the distant past.
“Since then firearm discharges have massively reduced across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire and are now incredibly rare, while the number of illegally-held firearms we have proactively seized and taken off the streets has increased significantly.
“Nottingham and Nottinghamshire are really great and safe places to live and visit. The positive difference has been made due to all the hard work done by our officers over the years and also the work that we have done together with our partners to keep people safe.
“This includes our ongoing relentless work to manage and disrupt organised crime groups which has developed over the years. This work is really sophisticated and has helped us put local criminals firmly on the back foot as well as in prison.
“We have also implemented the Operation Reacher initiative which was actually piloted on the Bestwood Estate in 2018 and which saw very quick and significant results, involving officers proactively targeting local criminals as well as building stronger community relationships.
“This approach has been replicated across all of the neighbourhood policing areas within Nottingham and
Nottinghamshire where the specialist teams have been seeing similar successes and where the activities of organised crime groups have been massively disrupted.”
In their first full year alone the Operation Reacher teams arrested or dealt with 2,026 suspects, seized £619,000 in suspected illicit cash, and made 874 different drug seizures.
They also took 423 weapons and 569 illegal cars off the streets, and also carried out 672 searches at the homes and hiding places of suspected offenders.
ACC Griffin added: “All of our success in combating organised crime groups is also reflected in our general reduction in crime and specifically in the type of crime that Mr Gunn talks about in the podcast.
“As a force we remain committed to keeping people safe and targeting those who cause most harm in our communities, to make life as uncomfortable as possible for criminals and to establish stronger, more trusting links with the public which I’m delighted to say we have been successful in achieving.”