ARMED gangs rule the streets of a Sheffield suburb with fear making it difficult for detectives to investigate murders, stabbings and other serious crimes, a court heard.
Sheffield Crown Court heard Burngreave and Pitsmoor "are very difficult areas to police" because victims and witnesses are afraid to report crimes or give evidence against offenders - and some gun attacks had gone unreported.
The admissions were made by a senior detective in the re-trial of a man accused of shooting dead Sheffield teenager Jonathan Matondo in a postcode gang war.
Det Insp Matt Fenwick, who ran an operation to crackdown on drug-related gang crime in Sheffield, told Sheffield Crown Court few prosecutions had been brought as a result of gang-related incidents in Burngreave and Pitsmoor - because victims and witnesses are often too scared to cooperate with the police.
Det Insp Fenwick was giving evidence at the trial of 19-year-old Negus Nelson, of Carwood Road, Pitsmoor, who denies murdering 16-year-old Jonathan Matondo on the Nottingham Cliff recreation area in Burngreave last October.
Nelson is accused of being part of a group which organised the assassination of the teenager, from Verdon Street, Burngreave, as part of long-running feud between two rival gangs associated with the S3 and S4 postcodes.
Det Insp Fenwick told the court of a dossier of incidents involving the warring gangs in the two years before the killing. He said very few had led to charges because people refused to give evidence. He said police have details of more than 38 incidents, and probes into them had led to the seizure of six guns and 21 bullets, but added details of some of those incidents had not emerged until detectives began investigating Jonathan's murder.
The detective said trouble between the gangs had "diminished" in recent times with some of the S4 members now in custody for offences including firearms and drugs.
But he said there were now divisions among the S3 gang with members forming "splinter groups" and fighting with each other instead, with "a number of shootings, stabbings and murders".
Det Insp Fenwick said: "Burngreave and Pitsmoor are very difficult areas to police in respect of getting people to come forward and give evidence.
"The police need cooperation from both the general public, the community of Burngreave and Pitsmoor, and also from gang members when investigating gang-related incidents.
"When people do come forward to give us intelligence they do so in anticipation that intelligence is given in a way that we would protect them and that their identity would never be divulged.
There's an expectation of the police to maintain their anonymity.
"These people are in fear of the gangs that operate within their communities and the level or propensity to use firearms and the level they are prepared to use.
"People are not just afraid of the offenders, who might be on remand in custody, but other gang members and what they might do, and the extreme measures they might go to to prevent anybody from co-operating with the police.''
Referring to his dossier of evidence on the feud between the two warring gangs, he added: "When you consider the inquiries which have taken place in relation to the various incidents very few prosecutions have arisen.
"That's because of people's unwillingness to cooperate with our inquiries."
The trial continues.
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