60 to 70 organised crime gangs currently operating in South Yorkshire, senior police officer reveals

There are currently 60 to 70 organised crime gangs operating in South Yorkshire, a senior police officer has said, as he confirms an area of Sheffield previously plagued by shootings is no longer a 'concern'. 

The force set up an armed crime team in 2020 in response to a spike in the number of shootings being carried out across the county, During the course of 2020 were a total of 86 viable firearm discharges recorded in South Yorkshire, with 51 reportedly being carried out in Sheffield. 

Detective Superintendent Jamie Henderson is the head of serious and organised crime and firearms lead for South Yorkshire Police. 

He told The Star that he believes there are around 60 to 70 'mapped' organised crime groups, or gangs (OCGs), operating across South Yorkshire at the moment, and that the 'overwhelming majority' of shootings carried out in the county relate to disputes among OCGs. 

"The majority of firearms discharges - it goes without saying - are involved in in drugs, essentially and we are one of the key gun crime forces nationally so we have a disproportionately higher number of firearms discharges and the reasons behind it are complex, but the overall overwhelming majority of boils down to organised crime groups in disputes around drugs,"Det Supt Henderson explained.   

He continued: "The victims and perpetrators generally tend to be either in their late teens or early twenties and they sit at the lower end of organised crime group hierarchies, so these are not the higher echelons that are involved in it, it is the lower ones that are often having turf wars."

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The 'Abbeydale Road corridor,' which, in addition to Abbeydale Road, includes the Nether Edge, Sharrow, Heeley, Arbourthorne neighbourhoods, became an area of concern for South Yorkshire Police, following a number of shootings. 

Det Supt Henderson said: "What I want to be clear on is that was a concern but it's not now. The community really came together to support us and we did a large drugs operation called Operation River back in 2021, which supplemented our firearms enforcement work.

"The work that went on down there in the destruction and enforcement that targeted OCGs within those communities so it's not it's not an issue for us now in terms of firearms discharges like it was hot on our radar backing 2020, 2021. I think it’s a bit more dispersed across the borough."

Among the range of factors that now mean the Abbeydale Road is no longer an ‘issue’ or 'concern' for police in the way it once was is the conviction and imprisonment of a number of individuals, Det Supt Henderson told The Star. 

Work to bring those responsible for shootings relating to OCGs and 'turf wars' to justice is not a straightforward process, however.

"Victims of shootings tend not to engage with the police and sometimes quite quite often actually refuse to give us information to assist our investigations which frustrates us and it makes it more difficult; and then we rely on other forms of gathering evidence, whether that be through CCTV through intelligence or from forensics," Det Supt Henderson said.