New tactics against ‘county lines’ drug dealing are working, say police
This looks like very promising progress in tackling this very serious problem. The story tells us:
Police say new tactics have enabled them to drive the expansion of ‘county lines’ drug dealing into reverse, and have vowed to eradicate it from the country’s worst-affected area.
County lines – whereby drug-dealing gangs from cities expand their operations to other areas – had been growing every year, with rural areas such as Norfolk plagued by drugs from London and serious violence. Gangs had become so comfortable they were sending out “Happy Christmas” messages to their clients.
Under the tactics, escalated during the coronavirus lockdown, officers go after those controlling the lines from London via their pay-as-you-go mobile phones rather than just chasing the runners sent to rural areas.
In Norfolk, the runners are usually teenagers who transport drugs in clingfilm wraps within their body. Cash is taken back to London in the same way.
So far, 30 out of 75 lines in Norfolk have been shut after those controlling them were traced and arrested in London, police say, with the closed lines responsible for half the drugs sold. Det Insp Robin Windsor-Waite, the officer leading Norfolk police’s efforts, told the Guardian: “It is a massive rollback.”
Norfolk is the area in Britain with the highest number of recorded crimes linked to county lines, with hotspots in Great Yarmouth and King’s Lynn, and police say they have rewritten the rule book on how to tackle it.
Windsor-Waite said: “As those controlling the networks are commonly based outside the county, they may have a feeling of impunity, believing they’re beyond our reach and being careful not to attract the attention of their home force. To successfully tackle county lines criminality, we need to arrest the controlling minds rather than the mules and street dealers.
“In the majority of cases, the arrest of the line controller terminates the line – and the risk associated with that line. Prior to this operation there was a degree of resignation to the continued exponential growth of county lines within Norfolk. The outlook has been transformed and our ambition is to completely eliminate the county lines business model from the county.”
The tactics have led to arrests being made in London since December. The Home Office provided extra money for the Met to act on intelligence.
Since November, 146 London-based alleged county line holders have been charged with selling class A drugs such as crack and heroin across Britain – in Scotland, Surrey, Kent, south Wales, and Devon and Cornwall, as well as Norfolk.