UK police took down ‘Britain’s Pablo Escobar’ after translating scouse slang from Dutch authorities
Thick as a docker's butty, jib that off, meff. If you have any idea what any of that means, you’re probably familiar with Scouse slang.
As it turns out, Dutch authorities are less familiar with Liverpudlian's vocabulary, and had to enlist the help of UK police when taking down Britain’s Pablo Escobar, aka Curtis Warren.
Widely considered Liverpool's most infamous gangster, Warren was sentenced in 2009 to 13 years in prison after being found guilty of conspiracy to smuggle cannabis, but had been considered one of Europe's leading drug smugglers long before that.
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Warren was asleep in bed when Dutch police stormed his farmhouse armed with automatic weapons and stun grenades.
The elite team had been watching Warren for months before charging the farmhouse he and his henchmen used in rural Sassenheim.
Police arrested the drug kingpin at gunpoint and under the cover of darkness, but the operation couldn’t have been carried out without the help of UK police.
Warren’s arrest was a direct result of Operation Crayfish, one of the 1990s’ defining police operations.
Based around a secret location off the M62 - known to police as 'Fraggle Rock' - Crayfish was led by the north west regional crime squad.
Crayfish was an operation launched specifically to target drugs gangs emerging in Manchester and Liverpool throughout the 90s, and Warren - who hailed from Toxteth - quickly became police’s number one target.
Once Warren moved from Liverpool to Holland, police working on Crayfish shared intelligence with their Dutch counterparts, whose own operation was nicknamed Prisma.
However, when Dutch police started bugging Warren's conversations with his associates, they had some difficulty working out exactly what the hell he was saying.
In one particular conversation, Warren used his Toxteth slang to order an attack on a man, according to the Liverpool Echo.
Speaking to an associate named TB, Warren said: “You'd better get round to that Jamie's and smash his kipper in.”
TB replied: "Oh I'm going round there," to which Warren responded: “Don't let him talk his way out of it you know.”
"Oh I know he's not going to. I'm going to hammer him," TB fired back.
And 13 years on from Warren’s sentencing, the criminal will reportedly leave prison next month.
The Liverpool Echo reported that prosecutors are concerned Warren has around £200 million stashed away, however, Warren himself insists he has no money left, with his legal team calling the claim 'ridiculous'.
The paper also reports that even if Warren does have money squirrelled away, he’ll probably have a hard time using it following his release, seeing as he’ll be being closely monitored.
Aisha Nozari