‘We’ll arrest fewer drug addicts to focus on smashing county lines’
Police chief’s vow as Blackpool gets £5m in dealer crackdown
DRUG addicts could escape prosecution as police crack down on crime kingpins and county lines ripping communities apart.
The Government has handed police, health chiefs and public officials more than £148million to cut crime, protect people and fight the scourge of drugs across the country.
Nearly £5million of that is going to fight the war on drug use in Blackpool alone.
Law officers, medical experts and local council bosses are now marshalling the £4.8million war chest to improve life in one of the country’s most blighted towns.
Disconnected
In an exclusive interview with the Daily Express, the two senior police officers leading Lancashire Police’s battle against county lines gangs in the seaside town revealed their teams will be using more civil orders.
They will use them to ban suspected dealers from travelling to the town, bar them from renting homes in the area and have their phones disconnected if they are used to peddle drugs such as heroin or crack cocaine.
A specialist team of officers is also being set up to solely focus on the county lines threat.
Policing Minister Kit Malthouse threw the gauntlet down to senior police officers last week aiming to cut the head off the snakes of the underworld.
Detective Chief Supt Sue Clarke, who is leading Lancashire Police’s work on Operation Adder, revealed officers are trying to cut the supply
of drugs to the town while simultaneously reducing demand.
One of the key components could be forcing addicts caught with drugs into treatment, rather than prosecuting them.
Ministers have invested an additional £80million into drug treatment services.
Ms Clarke said: “Each circumstance is different, isn’t it, and it might well be that the child could be arrested in the first instance because we have to understand the story.
“Somebody can be a user one day and a dealer another day.When we are talking about a dealer, they might have been asked to deal six bags and they have been caught with them. I don’t want to vilify
these people. These are people who could be our sons, daughters.”
She said that in her 30 years of police service current tactics had not worked.
Asked if more users could escape being charged for drug offences, she said: “It depends. You can’t make generic statements with regards to this because the individual circumstances dictate the individual responses.
“We would never say to our frontline cops, a bland statement, we’re not criminalising people who possess that. We’re not saying that. What we’re saying is, get all the facts and use them as most suitable” – the appropriate method for that person.
“That might be a therapeutic response. That might be to see one of our lived experiences teams, it might be going to court.”
Detective Superintendent Becky Smith, who oversees Blackpool CID, added: “It could be prison. These people are not born into criminality. They don’t choose to be criminals.
“Some of these people have extremely sad stories to tell. You can’t arrest your way out of this. And that is why we are working differently.”
A team of 10 officers in Blackpool will now focus solely on the county lines threat in the town.
Gangs travel from Merseyside, Greater Manchester, Yorkshire and the West Midlands to peddle drugs there.
Within the team will be uniformed officers, financial investigators who can trace the cash and analysts to shine a light on the criminals.
Police chiefs say they will also hit criminals where it hurts the most – their pockets.
Ms Smith added: “We are making more use of civil orders.Things like slavery and trafficking orders, drugs telecommunication restriction orders. “These are new and emerging tactics we can use in the fight against drug use. The burden of proof is lower than a criminal case.”
Policing...Kit
Malthouse caption: Is in 8.5pt helvetica bold except
New approach ...police in Blackpool will be using more civil orders
Investigators