In the early hours of August 7 a black Range Rover pulled over in the Steenderenstraat, one of the most Souteastern streets within Amsterdam's city limits. A couple of men, joking in their native Suriname, got out of pick something up after a barbecue they had attended. Three youngsters who were standing nearby thought the laughing and talking was about them and an argument developed.

After one of the men had referred to the youngsters as 'monkeys', one of them left, came back on a scooter and opened fire. 15-year old Gianluca Flamingo, who was then sitting in the back seat of the car, was hit in the head. As the guy on the scooter got away, the driver of the car, kickboxer Tyrone Spong, ran up to the two other kids and dealt them a few blows. Gianluca died around 5 p.m. the next day.

The death of Gianluca, who was in the wrong place at the wrong time, is the nadir of a wave of violence hitting Amsterdam's Southeast neighborhood, commonly referred to as the Bijlmer. This year 22 shooting incidents have been reported, three of which had a deadly outcome. Gersom Francisca (28) was shot in front of his house in the early morning of June 7 following a fight about his sister at a bar downtown. On September 21, Ishmael Gumbs (19) was killed at a playground, in front of his wife and child.

Kids with a short fuse

"It has been a very hot summer on the streets of the Bijlmer," a 22-year old ex-criminal (who asked not to be named) says about the violence. "Every threat is now taken seriously. Everyone has their guard up. A generation is growing up that has a very short fuse. There are some 16-year-old kids here that are plain crazy."

The hot summer made Amsterdam police commissioner Bernard Welten sound the alarm and borough president Elvira Sweet cut her vacation short to deal with the problems in the neighbourhood.

The violence comes at a time when the area seemed to be going through a revival. Amsterdam Southeast, often referred to as the Bijlmer, was built in the 1960s and 70s as a town of the future. But the combination of high- and low-rise housing did not create the desired environment. The Bijlmer soon became known as an ethnic minority ghetto where immigrants, especially from the former colonies Suriname and the Netherlands' Antilles, were overrepresented.

But urban renewal in the 1990s that consisted of the demolition of the more ill-reputed high-rises, unsafe parking garages and impoverished shopping malls appeared to have the desired result. Middle class families moved back to the area and the crime rate dropped substantially. Everybody agrees that the area has improved incredibly over the past 15 years. So what sparked the flame of the recent violence?

Toxic mix boiling over

No one is able explain the rise in shootings, which the police says are not connected. Thirty people have been arrested, most of them in their twenties. Seven cases are stalled because the people involved refuse to cooperate. The police can't say if this number is higher than usual, because it does not usually register whether firearms were used in any given incident. Nor can it compare the statistic to other Amsterdam boroughs for that reason.

But people living in the Bijlmer are worried. They feel a toxic mix of unemployment, drug trade, gun possession, macho behaviour and aggression is boiling over. The fire is fed by rumours of fighting and shootings and torrents of abuse on websites. "If you look at all the incidents, you can detect the connecting thread: a male-dominated culture with a hyper-sensitivity to certain behaviour," criminologist Frank van Gemert says. He thinks the death of Gianluca fits that scenario.

The 15-year-old spent much of his time in the Thai boxing centre run by Lucien Carbin. He says Gianluca was a fighter with a bright future ahead of him. "He was well-raised, always very polite," says Carbin. He was also the mascot of Tyrone Spong, aka the 'King of the Ring', a 24-year-old kickboxer and the driver of the Range Rover that morning.

Gangster lifestyle, symbols and signs

Rumour has it that the shooting was preceded by a fight in which the 19-year-old gunman, who is still in custody, got a black eye. Spong, who did make statements to the police, declined to go on the record for this article because he does not want to engage in mud-slinging.

"You don't mess with kids like that," Carbin says. "If you bump into someone from the street without saying sorry, you will be in trouble. You hit one: you're dead."

'Someone from the street' has become a phenomenon in Southeast. Many young men from the Antilleans, but also from Suriname, spend a lot of their time outdoors. Some of the groups are considered a nuisance, others are criminal. There are four gangs involved in drug trade, street robberies and car burglaries, according to the police. Antilleans are rated highest when it comes to violent crime, people from Suriname are a good second, says Carbin, himself from that South-American country. "Then there is nothing for a long time, and way down, the Africans."

One of the gangs is dubbed the Hopiboys, after the Hoptille flats where they like to hang out. They cultivate the American gangster lifestyle, with all the appropriate symbols and signs. Some youngsters in another part of the Bijlmer wear red bandanas, the symbol of the Los Angeles gang the Bloods.

Fashion rather than structure

The municipality last year asked Antilleans expert Marion van San to investigate the groups. "There are no gangs in Amsterdam, and certainly not in Southeast," she concluded. The results were never published by the authorities. Van San: "Wearing gangster signs is a fashion thing and of course there are guys that commit crimes, but the gang codes and division of tasks are not at play here."

The 22-year old source with a criminal past of his own agrees with her. "You can always get out and go back to school."

The gangster glamour does have a lot of allure for youngsters in an area that deals with a lost of poverty, single-parent families, school dropouts and unemployment, while the TV and internet promise a world of luxury. That triggers a lot of kids, says rapper Kiddo Cee, who grew up in the Bijlmer. Apart from being a neighbourhood with only 27 percent ethnic Dutch people, Southeast also scores high in another risk factor for nuisance: 27 percent of the people in the neighbourhood are under 20 and as many as 50 percent are under 35.

"When you see guys in fancy cars that give you 50 euros if you run an errand for them, it feels like you have a 'family'," Kiddo Cee says about his own experience as a 13-year-old. He still uses the name he was given for being the youngest of the group as his stagename.

'Violent, deviant behaviour'

Amsterdam has a rich hiphop culture with about 100 rappers. Lexxxus the Don, who was shot at a local festival in August and boasted about being a "gangsta" in a video taped from his hospital bed, is one of them.

Police commissioner Welten has said the rappers are setting the wrong example by glorifying the gangster life, getting rich quick and macho behaviour. But Kiddo Cee says that is too narrow minded: rap is just the poor black men's music, he says. "When I was growing up, rap gave me an identity and the music helped me escape the streets." But he does admit it can have a bad influence, more so in the Bijlmer than in richer boroughs of the capital. "Kids there have alternative role models."

Former borough president Hannah Belliot agrees: "In this environment of social-economic deprivation that form of protest is cultivated into viciousness and destruction: I killed that nigger."

Kickboxing is part of that masculine culture, it is considered cool. Carbin says the government should subsidise him for "teaching the kids discipline and keeping them off the street." But Belliot thinks kickboxing can actually make the kids more aggressive: "I see kids kicking and hitting in the subway. That is violent, deviant behaviour, but they think it is a normal way of communicating."

Attention has shifted

The easy availability of guns is an even bigger problem. Over the last 13 weeks the police confiscated 15 firearms from 12 people and that seems to be only the tip of the iceberg. Carbin: "Suriname and Antillean people generally carry a weapon. If they are hustling, they buy things: a car, a cell phone, a gun. There are plenty of people who can supply those. You tell them what you need and you can come pick it up. The price and the quality depend on how desperate you are. People carry them out of fear. A gun makes you feel you can play God at any given moment."

But carrying a gun is not the same as using it, the anonimous ex-criminal says. The more violence there is, the more people will use their weapons, according to him. Kiddo Cee says the economic crisis part of the problem. "Luxury goods are even further out of reach now. Drugs profits have come under pressure and that makes for more frustration."

The new pattern seems to be that every fight ends up in a shooting. "Kids get worked up over nothing," Carbin says. "People don't tolerate anything anymore." And the culprits are getting younger and younger. "Little kids serve as look-outs during drug deals or they are used as mules," says Kiddo Cee. The anonimous 22-year-old says the new kids are different. "Danger is an adrenaline rush to them, something they get used to. They see a shooting, talk about it for a bit and then get back behind their Playstation."

Former borough president Belliot, says the fact that the area improved has also worked against it. "All the attention is now focused on integration, on Islam and the Moroccan minority in Amsterdam-West. Poverty policies and programs for youngsters have been dismantled."

Gianluca's grave, meanwhile, has been cleared of the funeral flowers, apart from one vase of wilted lillies. A brown boxing glove has been left in the sand.