The Criminal Alphabet (6 page)

See the
Cali

Till-hopping
is a
specialist form of theft involving the robbing of cash registers in large shops and
department stores. I met a fella called Kevin while on remand in HMP
Latchmere House in 1976 who went on to become one of the most prolific
till-hoppers in Europe in later life, serving time in Germany, France, Switzerland
and the UK for theft of cash from tills. When Kevin was twelve years old he
sometimes worked in his uncle's shop and noticed how simple the key to the till was.
He decided to try his uncle's till key in the till of another local shop and, when
the owner was distracted, he managed to open the till and walk out with a handful of
half-crowns. That was the start of a criminal career that has spanned almost four
decades and shows no sign of slowing down. Kevin discovered that till locks could be
opened by any of three generic types of till key, and that was him off and running.
His first modus operandi was to walk into a supermarket and make his way to the
staff changing room, where he would steal a shop coat with the store's logo on it.
He'd then slip on the shop coat, make his way to one of the tills that wasn't being
used, casually unlock it and help himself to the cash inside. In a busy supermarket,
nobody would even give him a second look; the shop uniform was as good as
camouflage. He'd keep the shop coats he stole to use in different branches of the
same shop. Kevin would hit five or six shops a day and was earning a nice few quid
from his endeavours, but it wasn't long before the supermarkets started to notice
the thefts and decided to take steps. What you have to remember is that all this was
happening in the 1970s, before there was CCTV in every nook and cranny and when shop
security usually consisted of a series of mirrors set in strategic spots and a
retired copper as a less-than-invisible store detective. Eventually, one of the
major supermarkets set up a watch on its unused tills and Kevin was nabbed
red-handed removing a bundle of notes from the till.

Getting nicked was really no drama for
Kevin – he was
only charged with theft and it was his first
offence. He was given a conditional discharge and walked out of the court determined
to become more professional – giving up his lucrative activities never even occurred
to him. As he perfected his operation, he recruited a couple of like-minded young
criminals from his small corner of South London and set about ripping off the cash
registers of the capital in a big way. Kevin would still use a shop coat and his
jigglers
(keys) to steal from the till, but with the help of
his two new partners in crime, he could now steal more than ever. His new method of
operation involved his partners either starting a fight in the shop or
‘accidentally' knocking down a display so as to attract the attention of shoppers
and staff. While the victims were engaged in the ‘show' created by his colleagues in
crime, Kevin would be doing three or four tills in the same shop. To use the
criminal vernacular of the time, Kevin absolutely rinsed every major supermarket and
department store in London and the home counties over a period of five years.
Sometimes he and his parters in crime would be caught and have to serve short
periods in prison, but the money was so good that they would immediately go back to
it once they were released. They travelled the British Isles carrying out their till
thefts and, finally, when it became too
hot
for them to work in the
UK (their pictures were on the watch list of most major retailers), they applied for
passports and took their thieving road show to Europe. Kevin kept right up to date
on any technology to do with tills and cash registers, and whenever a new till went
on the market, he'd purchase one direct from the company, along with more keys to
add to his theft kit. In Europe they took to setting light to slug pellets, which
creates a lot of thick, foul-smelling smoke, and then raising the fire alarm
so that everyone had to evacuate the premises, leaving Kevin to
rifle every till in the shop. Till-hopping now seems to be a dying crime but is
still carried out by some ‘distraction' thieves who use the old trick of creating a
diversion pioneered by Kevin and his gang.

The term
tom game
originated in the 1930s and is still widely used by criminals today. Usually carried
out by at least two perpetrators, the tom game, also known as ‘the ring game', is no
more than a slightly sophisticated ‘snatch'. A motor vehicle is essential in order
to carry out this crime, unless the perpetrators are very fast runners (and that
would be highly unlikely, as most of the firms that carry out this sort of crime
nowadays are made up of drug addicts using the loot to fund their habits). The
driver pulls up outside a good-quality jeweller's and leaves the engine running
while his companion, suitably suited and booted, appears as a customer at the door
of the premises. Once he has been buzzed in, the front man asks to look for example,
at diamond rings, chooses the most expensive ring on the tray, takes it in his hand
and turns towards the window of the shop as if to examine it in the light. This is
the signal for the driver to leave the car and make their way to the door. The
driver waits for the shopkeeper to buzz the door open then holds the door wide while
the front man makes a hasty exit. Both then jump into the vehicle and make their
getaway, leaving the shocked shopkeeper minus an expensive diamond ring. The team
will usually then take their prize to a dealer and cash it in for drugs.

A
walk-in
is an
audacious theft usually committed in broad daylight which requires the perpetrator
to have plenty of front and an air of entitlement – someone a bit like a Tory
minister. The typical walk-in thief is well dressed and confident, so that they can
enter large office buildings without attracting suspicion. The thief breezes into an
office block, usually carrying a large briefcase in which to load the loot, and
walks around, casing the building, looking out for valuable items that are easy to
steal. This could be the personal property of those working in the building or
equipment belonging to the company. Laptop computers are a favourite – they're
portable and high value – as are handbags, wallets, purses and mobile phones. It is
rare that anyone will know everyone who works in their building so, unless there are
vigilant security guards, anyone who looks the part can walk in, take what they
want, then walk right out again.There are criminals who make a decent living at the
walk-in and travel up and down the country and abroad to do it. Front is everything
in the walk-in game.

See
Creeper

Whizzer
as slang for a
pickpocket has largely fallen out of vogue since its heyday in the 1940s and '50s.
Whiz mobs
used to work the crowds at racecourses, picking
pockets then blending into the throng of race-goers. The origin of the word ‘whiz'
is uncertain, but some people say it's to do with the speed with which these
criminals could
dip
a crowd – they would whiz right through.

See
Dip
,
Stiks/Stiks
man

Section 25 of the Theft Act 1968 states
that ‘a person shall be guilty of an offence if, when not at his place of abode, he
has with him any article for use in the course of or in connection with any
burglary, theft or cheat. A person guilty of an offence under this section shall on
conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding three
years.' This is the crime of going equipped.

In order to commit most crimes, you will
need certain tools of the trade. For example, without a weapon, or something that
resembles a weapon, you'd be very hard pressed to carry out an armed robbery. That
said, I have robbed two banks with nothing more than my pointed fingers inside a
paper bag. But I digress. It stands to reason that if you set out to do a job or
bit of work
, you'll need the kit to carry it out. Some crimes,
obviously, don't require any tools. I mean, take the crime of Actual Bodily Harm
(ABH): in order to commit ABH all you need is your fists, feet, head, elbows or
knees, because ABH is causing someone harm with blows or kicks. It's very rare,
though, that the law will class any part of the human body as a tool for the
purposes of going equipped for crime. There have been cases of certain boxers and
martial arts experts registering their hands or feet as deadly weapons, but this is
more hype than anything else, and it would create serious problems were the courts
to order the confiscation of these ‘weapons' after they had been used in crime.

There are many tools used by the
criminal and prison fraternity and some of them have no uses other than criminality.
The sawn-off shotgun, or
nostrils
, is specific to armed crime, as a
shotgun is only ever shortened in order to make it easy to conceal. There is
actually a criminal
charge of shortening the barrels of a firearm,
which carries a maximum prison sentence of four years. I was charged with just that
in 1993 and received the maximum sentence. I wonder if people are aware that you can
be put into prison for years for wielding a junior hacksaw.

Other tools used specifically by
criminals and prisoners include the
chiv
– a home-made stabbing and
slashing weapon for inflicting injuries on rivals (used only in prisons), the
strip
, a flattened piece of flexible metal used in car theft,
and the
cosh
, a hand-held, weighted implement used for hitting
people. However, if you are in possession of any of the weapons mentioned above, it
will inevitably lead to the more serious charge of possession of offensive weapons.
There are many more, and you'll come across them sooner or later in this book. But
even the most common household implement can be used in crime. Scissors are great
for opening car locks and, in prison, a scissor blade is a common stabbing tool; you
can use a fishing rod to poke through letter boxes and hook house and car keys; and
common spark plugs can be used to break glass, as can a centre punch. Some
professional burglars even use newspaper and jam or marmalade to gain entry to a
building. They smear a window with the preserve and slap a few sheets of newspaper
over it before giving it a whack with a hammer. This deadens the sound, which is
especially useful if you're working at night, and an added advantage is that the
glass sticks to the newspaper, enabling the burglar to ‘peel' the window out, again
without making much noise.

At one point in the 1970s the police,
ever eager for convictions, used ‘creative' thinking when arresting people for going
equipped. I know of at least one person who was sent to
borstal
for
being in possession of a sock! The police claimed he was going to smash a shop
window in order to steal, then put the sock over his hand to avoid leaving
fingerprints. He spent eighteen months in a closed borstal for
this. Being stopped by the police and having a pair of gloves was a sure-fire way of
getting arrested, especially at night, hence the substitution of socks, and hence
the police and the courts moving the goalposts and making it an offence to be caught
in possession of a sock.

Prisoners in British jails, and probably
in jails the world over, are expert at creating weapons out of mundane objects.
Knives can be made from the lids of tin cans, the handles of plastic toilet brushes
or toothbrushes – in fact, just about anything. Spears and arrows capable of
piercing human flesh can be made from tightly rolled paper, and coshes can be
fashioned from anything from batteries in a sock to bars of soap in a pillow case.
The tools of crime and violence are all around us in our everyday lives – but
particularly in prison. Boiling water has become a favourite weapon in prison.
Scalding a fellow prisoner is known as
wetting up
or
jugging
. The perpetrator will fill a plastic jug or bucket with
boiling water from the hot-water boiler (there is one on most prison wings so that
prisoners can make tea and coffee) and mix in a pound of sugar. They'll stir the
sugar until it has partly melted, making the water more like a syrup, then throw the
liquid in the face of the victim. The part-melted sugar will cling to the flesh and
burn to the bone. This is a ‘punishment' reserved mainly for sex offenders and
informers, but even a minor argument can lead to action of this sort when you live
in an environment of brutality, fear and paranoia like the British prison
system.

An
April
is a weapon, as
in April fool = tool. If a villain tells you he is going to sort you out with his
April, don't think, ‘Well, it's only June now so I've got plenty of time'; it means
they are going to get a weapon and intend to inflict serious injury on you. An April
can be anything from a cosh to a machine gun. In prison, you should be aware of
Aprils in the showers that come your way!

See
Chiv
,
Cosh
,
Tooled up

Boys
is slang for ‘keys'
but, in a common twist when it comes to criminal slang, it is slang for what is
already a slang word: keys were once known as
twirls
(from the
‘twirling' action used when opening a lock) in the criminal fraternity (boys and
girls = twirls = keys). Some criminal and prison slang has become convoluted over
the years, either because it has fallen into common usage and been ‘translated' by
the enemy and the general public, or because a more modern word has replaced it. As
a result, there can be several levels of slang before you get to the original words.
Sometimes, working out the etymology of slang is like being an archaeologist, as you
have to dig very deeply in order to uncover the word that is the basis for a couple
of hundred years' worth of slang. Skeleton keys, which were once a mainstay of the
burglary kit, are known as ‘bones', for obvious reasons.

In serious armed robbery circles, the
happy bag
is an essential piece of kit. It is the bag, or bags,
used to keep and transport the weaponry needed to carry out the act.
Guns, masks, tools and gloves will be stored in it before and after the robbery,
and the bag will also be used to carry the cash away, hence the ‘happy' tag. When
they mount surveillance operations the Flying Squad are always pleased to see a
happy bag, as it means that a robbery is imminent.

See
Across the Pavement

A
hoisting bag
is
usually a large laundry bag lined with tinfoil. The foil allows the hoister to walk
out of any shop with a bag full of stolen items still with their security tags on
and not set off the sensor alarms at the doors – essential for the modern hoister,
who relies on speed and surprise rather than secrecy and guile. The hoisting bag
will allow the villain that extra precious couple of minutes to get to the getaway
vehicle before all the hue and cry.

See
Hoisting
,
Space Blanket

Keeping dog
is to be the
lookout, or warning man, when a crime is being committed (doggy's eye = spy). If
someone were to ask you to keep dog, they wouldn't be inviting you to become the
owner of a canine but rather to keep an eye out while something is going down. In
public schools the person keeping dog would shout a warning of ‘
Cave
!' if
someone in authority were to approach, Latin for ‘beware'. The more common criminal
warning cry is ‘On top!', meaning that someone is close.

See
Have It Up!

‘Taking
nostrils
for a
walk' is a phrase meaning to be out and about with a sawn-off double-barrelled
shotgun for the purposes of crime, ‘nostrils' being slang for this type of gun, for
obvious reasons.

Rice shots
are sometimes
used by professional armed robbers in order to frighten their victims into
compliance, but also as a non-lethal alternative to a gunshot. The robber will take
a live shotgun cartridge, saw the top off the plastic cartridge case then empty out
the lead shot. They will replace it with grains of uncooked rice and stick the top
of the cartridge back on with superglue. If it's a double-barrelled shotgun, the
robber will have the rice cartridge in one barrel and a live lead-shot cartridge in
the other. The gun will still fire the rice cartridge, however, as the detonating
cap in the base of the cartridge remains untouched, and it will sound just like a
real shot. During the course of a robbery, the robber knows that he can now let off
a shot without the danger of killing or seriously injuring anyone. Some robbers will
fire a rice shot into the ceiling of the target premises in order to grab attention
and frighten people into doing what they say. Hard, uncooked rice hitting a ceiling
sounds very much like lead shot. Some robbers will only use the rice cartridge if
someone ‘has a go'. The force of the rice and cartridge wadding will seriously sting
and bruise anybody it's fired at and will definitely discourage any
have-a-go-hero.

In general criminal terms, a
smother
is a mask, or disguise. In prison parlance, to ‘create
a smother' is to distract the screws while something illegal is carried out –
usually a drug deal or an act of violence. There is a form of
dipping
that is known as
the smother game
because it is all about using various items to mask the act of pickpocketing. But,
on the whole, to smother up is to disguise yourself for the purpose of crime.

See
Dipper
,
Stiks/Stiks man
,
Whizzer/Whiz mob

A
space blanket
is a
lined piece of tinfoil which, when wrapped around the head and body, will allow the
wearer to walk right through any sensor alarms without setting them off. They are
particularly loved by commercial burglars, especially those who target social and
working men's clubs, which is where you often find such alarms. The sensors seek
heat or movement, but the foil fools them, enabling the foil-clad thieves to empty
tills and fruit machines.

See
Burglary
,
Hoisting Bag

Some professional car thieves use a
strip
, a length of flat, flexible metal (usually aluminium)
that can be forced through a small gap between the window and the frame and used to
hook the handle up from the inside. Once inside the vehicle, the professional thief
will
scaff
the car: put a length of scaffolding tube into the
steering wheel and apply pressure until the steering lock snaps. They will then
either
use the scaffolding tube to snap off the ignition barrel, or
a
slide hammer
or panel puller – a short steel pole with a heavy
weight that slides easily up and down it, and into the end of which a self-tapping
screw slots. They'll insert the screw into the ignition lock and give it a couple of
turns until the threads bite into the softer metal of the lock, then twist it in as
far as it will go and use the weight to exert pressure on the screw, pulling
backwards. The ignition lock will pop out of its housing quite easily, exposing the
ignition wires. Then the professional car thief will stick a flathead screwdriver
into the hole and twist. They now have ignition. Another way of getting ignition is
to strip the wires and then connect them together; this is commonly known as
hot-wiring
, as the car thief is looking for the ‘hot' wire, the
one with the power running through it.