Police smash £64m a year county lines drug gangs

A WEST Midlands police taskforce has smashed 169 ‘county lines’ which were making drugs gangs £64 million per year – but fear thousands more could be operating.

The Regional Organised Crime Unit (ROCU) identified the shadowy phone hotlines selling heroin, cocaine and cannabis before swooping to arrest suspects trading in misery.

The taskforce, which launched last June, has pioneered the use of civil court action to close down the lines to destroy dealer-customer networks.

It has also helped rescue children as young as 12 who were being exploited and groomed by the ruthless gangs.

Detective Inspector Dan Rooks heads the ROCU team which is working around the clock to take down more county lines with the help of the public.

Yet he said he feared the 169 lines taken down since last June was just the tip of the iceberg.

“We are looking at hundreds of lines at the moment and we will pursue whilst we exist as a team,” he said.

“It’s like a fisherman casting his net. He doesn’t know what’s in the sea until he sees what’s in his net.”

He added: “We are aware of a couple more hundred that we’re looking at and developing and we’ll decide which are the highest risk.

“We’re looking at there being thousands of lines – it is big business. It is massive.

“My analysts have said these 169 drugs lines would have made around £64 million.

“That’s on the assumption the lines have been running a certain number of years, doing a certain number of deals.

“I think that’s probably shortscaling what the issue is as well. But that £64 million is what we think was made by those 169 lines in one year.

“It’s an estimate because some of those lines will have been making more, some less. It’s a conservative estimate of what we know.”

DI Rook added: “We do a big chunk of that work, the NCA (National Crime Agency) does a lot of work too and we get direction and work from the NCA.

“Actively on my team I have investigations into lines that go as far up as Scotland, down to Devon and Cornwall, into south Wales.

“The people who run drugs within Birmingham and the West Midlands are creating harm nationally.

“We’ll work with police forces around the country to try to hit the line at both ends.”

Intelligence to tackle the gangs often comes directly from the public – including parents of exploited children.