Window Cleaning + Guns

Australia's channel 9's new Gold Coast-based crime drama The Strip is "close enough", says one man who should know. The Sunday Mail asked a long-serving Gold Coast police officer to cast his expert eye over the new show, which Nine says realistically portrays the Coast's crime landscape. The officer, who asked to remain anonymous, reviewed the first episode, which will premiere on Thursday, about a window cleaner who is killed in a fall from a highrise after witnessing an extortion. WITHOUT giving too much of the storyline away, Channel 9's new cop drama The Strip looks good and moves at a fast pace between Gold Coast locations. What it does have is a lot of colour, glitter, sparkle and vertigo-inducing aerials of beaches and streetscapes by day and by night in speedy timelapse and slow-mo. Cameras zoom up and down the towers of Surfers Paradise, then across surf breaks. Neon flashes. The action launches before the opening credits roll. An abseiling window cleaner flirts with a young blonde in a 30th-floor unit of the Q1.
She launches a frantic search for pencil and paper as he descends to the floor below. By the time she turns back, he's climbing, panicked. Then he falls -- a dark blur. Murder victim No. 1 is unveiled in a pool of blood on the footpath. Two bodies, one surf legend, his trophy wife, her gambling problem, a torture and a stabbing later and the closing credits roll.

The gun shown below, a Webley, is up for sale in London for £150, one of hundreds of such weapons that are easily and cheaply available on the streets of the UK's big cities, a Guardian investigation can reveal. The variety of weapons on offer in Britain is extensive and includes machine guns and shotguns, as well as pistols and converted replicas. A source close to the trade in illegal weapons contacted by the Guardian listed a menu of firearms that are available on the streets of the capital. "You can get a clean [unused] 9mm automatic for £1,500, a Glock for a couple of grand and you can even make an order for a couple of MAC-10s," he said. "Or you can get a little sawn-off for £150. They're easy enough to get hold of. You'll find one in any poverty area, every estate in London, and it's even easier in Manchester, where there are areas where the police don't go."People who use shotguns tend to be lower down the pecking order. There is less use of sawn-off or full length shotguns, and if a criminal wants street cred, he wants a self-loading pistol, a MAC-10 or an Uzi submachine gun."This week a man who ran a "factory" for converting replica weapons into working guns was jailed for life. Police believe the products of Grant Wilkinson's workshops were used in more than 50 shootings, including eight murders. His speciality was turning legally purchased MAC-10s into weapons that could fire live rounds, an increasingly common practice.

What is not in dispute is the devastating effect that the casual use of a gun over a minor argument can have on dozens of people. In December 2006, Sean "Stretch" Jenkins, 36, an amiable, 6ft 8in window-cleaner from south London, was shot dead at a party in Carshalton. His killer was a cocaine dealer called Joseph Greenland, a volatile man with a quick temper, who had apparently taken offence at something Jenkins said. The men had earlier been at a boxing night at Caesar's in Streatham, where there had been some fighting outside the ring. Greenland had left the party, driven home in his Range Rover, picked up a gun and returned to kill Jenkins in front of at least five witnesses, who were warned not to talk. None of the immediate witnesses gave evidence against Greenland, who had a reputation for threatening to "annihilate" anyone who crossed him, but there were traces of his DNA on a cigarette end and a wine glass at the party and his bragging about the shooting was to be his downfall. His recourse to a gun, for no other reason than some perceived slight, left Jenkins's six-year-old son without a father and saddened a wide network of friends and family. Greenland was jailed for life last week and will have to serve 30 years before he can be considered for parole. "We got what we wanted," said the victim's mother, Maureen Jenkins, of the verdict and sentence last month. "I went to the cemetery and said, 'Well, boy, I can put you to rest'."