2024-02-14 18:38:00
Since last year, eight people have been killed in drug trafficking settlements. The profile of the victims is often identical. It is mainly small dealers who serve as “cannon fodder”, according to the police advisor for the Midi zone Gaëtan Van Goidsenhoven.
“Baby gangs” increasingly involved in organized crime: “a sort of ritual to join a criminal network”
These young people, often out of school and losing their bearings, are the ideal prey of drug traffickers to carry out front-line work. “It is mainly young dealers who bear the brunt of settling scores. We saw this last year in the city of Peterbos where an amateur dealer was tortured to death by members of a well-established criminal network who had taken control of this area,” he explains.
“Settling of scores is not done in the street between big bosses who mostly live abroad, but between individuals who are at the bottom of the ladder,” says Michel Claise, former judge of instruction and new recruit at Défi. “Criminal networks are better structured than in the past. Young people are massively recruited, in exchange for wads of banknotes, to act as lookouts, check entries and exits into social housing, and inform heads thinkers of criminal networks. These young people are puppets, puppets who deal to make a little money while trying to control their territory but who are increasingly cramped.”
“The fear of picking up a lost ball is increasing”
Thus, young criminals – often adolescents – find themselves armed in the streets with the aim of intimidating competing gangs, leading to a phenomenon of escalation of violence. “The spectrum of neighborhoods in which this happens is expanding and unfortunately, it is becoming complicated to have a peaceful drink on a terrace. For example, a shooting broke out last year on Avenue de Tervueren in Woluwe-Saint-Pierre. The fear of picking up a lost ball is increasing (a Brussels resident notably received a stray ball while she was sitting on the terrace of an establishment in the Saint Boniface district of Ixelles last year, Editor’s note),” adds Gaëtan Van Goidsenhoven . “The sound of firearms is increasingly becoming part of the soundscape in many neighborhoods, not just the sensitive neighborhoods of the past.”
Porte de Hal in Saint-Gilles, “the dealers set up with tables and chairs and conduct business”
Unlike a few years ago, weapons are now brandished in an almost trivial manner to intimidate rival gangs. Thus, on Tuesday afternoon, three individuals fired weapons of war into the air before fleeing in a car towards Anderlecht. During the chase, they knocked down a lady before crashing into a wall. “Weapons are used for the purpose of intimidation by small-time attackers who cannot always handle them,” adds Gaëtan Van Goidsenhoven.
Drug traffickers know full well that adolescents escape heavy legal sanctions and therefore have no qualms about calling on them. “Adolescents benefit from juvenile justice. They are therefore better protected. This constitutes a solid argument to convince them. The criminals deceive them by telling them that they don’t risk much,” Cécile Mathys, director of the Intervention Jeunesse research center, recently explained to us. “Drug traffickers and other criminals use this more flexible legal system to coax often vulnerable young people, who thus constitute what the police internally call ‘baby gangs.’”
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