Founded 1980s or earlier Years active 1980s to present Membership (est.) 250 | Founding location Moss Side, Manchester Territory Manchester | |
Criminal activities Drug trafficking, weapon trafficking, armed robbery, kidnapping, prostitution, extortion, racketeering, contract killing, money laundering | ||
The Gooch Close Gang also known as the G.C.O.G's (Gooch Close Gang) is an organised crime group based in Moss Side, Manchester, England. Most members of the gang grew up on the West Side of Moss Side around Gooch Close (which is where the gang gets their name from).
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The Gooch has had disputes with both Cheetham Hill and The Pepperhill Mob (A rival gang from the east side of Moss Side).
History
The Gooch Gang had its origins in the west side of Moss Side. From Young men hanging around a Shebeen on Gooch Close selling drugs. Gooch Close was a small cul-de-sac of semi-detached houses with an alley at one end.
The gangs - whilst supplying to the street dealers - also try to ensure that the dealers are protected from other gangs by protecting their territory. Most of their problems occur when rival street dealers start to move into territory already controlled by a gang or when a gang 'taxes' a rival dealer - a move seen as damaging street credibility and respect.
The Gooch was different to The Pepperhill Mob in ethnicity. The Gooch was mostly people of African descent, some still in contact with family in Nigeria, Gambia etc., while the Pepperhill were mostly from the West Indies.
Cheetham Hill Leader Anthony "White Tony" Johnson was involved in a killing on Saturday, January 9, 1988, against a rival gang member (Anthony Gardner, who was 26). Gardner was a member of a local Moss Side based gang. As Gardner drew up outside a sheban on Saturday, January 9, 1988, a man [Johnson] stepped out of the shadows, pulled a sawn-off shotgun from under his coat, pressed it against Gardners chest, and fired. It took Gardner about a minute to die on the pavement. Hearing the shots and believing the police had arrived, customers poured out of the sheban, throwing their drugs into the street. Later police found more than £1,000-worth of heroin and cocaine abandoned like so much litter.[2]
The drug trade in the city quickly became an extremely lucrative one and in the early 1980s a 'gang' war started between two groups vying for control of the market in Manchester city centre - the Cheetham Hill Gang and The Gooch Close Gang.
Later on the Gooch often bought and sold drugs to Cheetham Hill. The Gooch had close ties to Cheetham Hill, with the cousin of the Cheetham Hill Head being a leading figure in the Gooch. Which Delroy Brown (Pepperhill Mob Leader) thought was helping the "enemy's". [7]
The Gooch's gripe about The Pepperhill Mob was their leader, Delroy Brown. Who was an outsider to the group, due to his origin from Birmingham.
In 1996, an offshoot gang was identified (Young Gooch) which gained a frightening reputation for the violence and guns its members used. Five of its members were later arrested following Operation Eagle and were sentenced to more than 43 years in prison.
Around the same time as the Gooch Close gang was becoming known around the city, the Pepperhill Gang were also starting to emerge - taking their name from a pub in Moss Side. When the pub was closed down and the gang targeted by police, they reformed on another estate and took their name from the nearby Doddington Close.
In 1995, the head of the gang Raymond Pitt was shot dead and the gang started to splinter internally and new gang began to emerge under the leadership of Ray's brother Tommy - the Pitt Bull Crew. In January 2002, Operation Nile saw Tommy Pitt found guilty of one murder, three attempted murders, drugs and firearms offences.
Imprisonment
Ten members of south Manchester's Gooch gang were put on trial in October 2008 for a catalogue of gang-related crimes. Gang members Colin Joyce and Lee Amos had been arrested in 2000, when they had been apprehended at their 'nerve centre' in a house in Moss Side, found with an 'extraordinary array of firearms'. In 2001, they had been sentenced to nine years in prison but had been released early, on licence, in 2007 and there had followed a new bout of shootings.
In April 2009, Joyce and Amos were among 11 members of the 'Gooch gang' who were found guilty and charged with a 'catalogue of crimes' which included the murder of Ucal Chin and Tyrone Gilbert. These convictions were hailed by Manchester's chief prosecutor John Holt as having 'enormous significance for public safety'. Their trials were held 35 miles away at Liverpool Crown Court to lower the risk of witness intimidation from other gang members. Not unusually, the perpetrators of gun crime were also the victims, with Amos's brother Stephen Baba-Tunde Amos having been shot dead, in a gang-related shooting, aged 21, outside a bar in Ashton-under-Lyne in 2002.
Colin Joyce, aged 29, known as the leader of the gang, was given a minimum 39-year sentence. Lee Amos was sentenced to receive at least 35 years. Three other members of the gang were given minimum sentences of between 30 and 35 years.