9237051081?profile=originalBy David Amoruso

London gangster Patrick Adams (59) was arrested by Dutch police in Amsterdam on Friday. He is now awaiting his extradition back to the United Kingdom where he is wanted in connection with a shooting in London two years ago.

Adams is one of the leading members of what is known as “the A-Team” or Adams Family, one of London’s most feared organized crime families. Patrick’s older brother Terry Adams is the alleged head of the organization, while Patrick earned a reputation for violence as the group’s enforcer.

The Adams Family began its reign in the 1970s with protection rackets and expanded into robberies and drug dealing. Patrick (a photo above of a young Patrick Adams) himself served a lengthy prison sentence in the 1970s for armed robbery. In their quest for power the brothers made quite a body count, authorities and the media have linked them to over 20 murders. These were alleged to have been in connection with the drug trade as the family has been linked to South American drug cartels and Jamaican Yardie gangs in London.

9237051286?profile=originalThe arrest of Patrick Adams (right) comes after an international appeal to help trace him and his 54-year-old wife Constance was issued by Scotland Yard in May of this year. They had been linked to a shooting in broad daylight in Clerkenwell, north London in December 2013.

According to newspaper The Telegraph, “The shooting took place three days before Christmas on December 22 at 10 o’clock in the morning, when a man and woman approached a motorist who was sitting at the wheel of his black BMW X5 car and shot him in the chest. Witnesses described how the 51-year-old victim staggered from his car, which had been stationery at the junction of St John Street and Wycliff Street, close to City University, clutching his chest and screaming for help. The victim survived the attack, but spent more than a month in hospital recovering from what was widely thought to have been a gangland hit.”

The appeal worked and Patrick and his wife were apprehended in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. Scotland Yard had already narrowed down their search to the Netherlands and Spain as the most likely hiding place of the pair of fugitives. In 2001 it was reported that Patrick was living in a villa close to the Spanish city of Torremolinos.

Both Spain and the Netherlands are a favorite among British gangsters fleeing heat from rivals or law enforcement back home. Infamous drug baron Curtis Warren set up shop in the Dutch countryside and even did time in a Dutch prison where he stomped a fellow inmate to death.

More recently, British authorities said they thought drug boss Anthony Dennis was hiding in Spain. Dennis is sought for his alleged involvement in a large shipment of cocaine from South America to the Netherlands.

With Europe’s borders open for its citizens it’s a piece of cake for these gangsters to find a safe haven somewhere else. Thanks to police cooperation, however, their safe haven just got a little less safe than they would’ve liked.

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