British "geezer" = American "gangster"?

[Mike Speriosu]

While listening to a song by a recent British rap group called The
Streets, I came across an instance of the word "geezer" that does not
seem to mean "old man" in any way. Here are some lyrics from the song
"Geezers Need Excitement":

    Geezers need excitement
    If their lives don't provide them this they incite violence
    Common sense, simple common sense
    ...
    Geezers looking ordinary and a few looking leary
    Chips fly round the sound of the latest chart entry

And here are some lyrics from another song of theirs, "Who Got the Funk?":

    Geezers geezers geezers
    Who got the funk?
    Original pirate material
    Day in the life of a geezer
    Crispy, rosco, England's glory
    Uniq, locked on, Andy Lewis

    All Birmingham geezers
    All London heads
    Barnet, Brixton, Beckenham
    You're listening to The Streets
    Original pirate material

It seems to me (and the American friend who showed me these songs
agreed) that "geezer" is used here to mean what we call a "gangster".
Has anyone ever heard of this usage?

I looked up "geezer" in the OED and found that it does not necessarily
always mean "old man". Some of the examples even suggest this "gangster"
usage:

    "A geezer can't have an alibi for every minute of the day." (Greene,
1938)
    "There's a geezer I know named Twisty Dodds, kind of a small-time
crook you might call him." (Symons, 1958)

It also seems possible that the term might sometimes be used in a much
broader sense, along the lines of "chap" or "bloke", or perhaps "dude"
in the American sense.

Ideas?

Mike Speriosu

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