NO CHILD IS SAFE IN DRUG GANG BRITAIN
After Mail investigation, Children’s Commissioner says 50,000 youngsters may be peddling drugs and warns ... AN EPIDEMIC of drug gangs is responsible for a child protection crisis as serious as the threat of terrorism, the Children’s Commissioner warned l
Anne Longfield also said the true number of children being enslaved as drug runners in towns across the country could be as high as 50,000.
Her stark assessment came hours after a Mail investigation lifted the lid on the scale of the ‘county lines’ drugs menace.
In Norfolk, police have made more than 700 arrests and held 126 children on suspicion of dealing drugs. Mrs Longfield warned that no child was safe as she likened the crisis to the scandal of the child-sex grooming gangs operating in towns such as Rotherham.
She added: ‘That issue was made a national priority, in fact it was made a national threat alongside terrorism and national security, and I think this is just the same. It can be tackled, children can be protected and this can be prevented. But at the moment
there is no one with a clear responsibility to do that.’
As one former minister said a generation of youngsters were being ‘abandoned’, it emerged that:
The Home Office has issued new guidance on county lines revealing that white British children aged 15 to 16 are most at risk of exploitation, and that ‘county lines exploitation can affect any child or young person, male or female under the age of 18’;
Downing Street said the gangs amounted to ‘vile exploitation’ of children;
The chairman of children’s services in Norfolk said all parents should be on their guard.
Yesterday’s Mail told how police in Norfolk have fought a two-year battle against the county lines gangs. These drug lords – often based in major cities – use networks of children to sell their heroin and crack cocaine on the streets of provincial towns.
The ‘lines’ refers to highly lucrative telephone lines used to contact the dealers. It was revealed that children – many in the care system – were being taken from London, Leicestershire, Essex and Teesside and sent to Norfolk to sell drugs.
In a major intervention, Mrs Longfield told the Mail: ‘Just as child sexual exploitation was a child protection crisis that was once being overlooked, the grooming of children by gangs in county lines is a child protection crisis that needs attention at a national level.
‘At every level, nationally and locally, there needs to be a much greater focus on building the intelligence about identifying the children at risk.’
Mrs Longfield said she was now talking to middle- class parents of children performing well at school who had been lured into drug networks after being recruited in school, at after-school clubs, and on football fields and playgrounds. ‘I think this is an issue that’s much bigger than urban areas, it’s much bigger than children in care. It is something that should be a concern to every area of the country,’ she added.
The National Crime Agency estimates ‘there are more than 1,000 county lines selling class A drugs in Britain’. Charities say as many as 30 or 50 children might be involved in a single county line. Mrs Longfield said: ‘You are looking at 30,000 to 50,000 children involved, which is obviously chilling.
‘If we go back even a year ago, we would have looked for county lines activity in urban areas and in some of the seaside towns. But now what we have got is every police force,
‘Vicious and dangerous’
including places like Cumbria and Northumberland, reporting county lines activity.
‘It’s not just something you can sit back and think, well, that happens in Manchester or Birmingham or London – it literally now is something which sadly is part of the furniture of every police force in the country and that’s a change. The aggressive model of this business development is astounding – any child could be at risk of coming into contact with county lines now.’
Mrs Longfield added: ‘The methods that the gangs use to tie them in are vicious and extremely dangerous.
‘Very often part of the process will be that the gang will arrange for that child on their first run to be robbed by someone in the gang and that child will come back and probably get beaten up and told, “now you owe us for the price of the drugs and the phone”.’
She said many of the child slaves were not aggressive gangsters, but shy teenagers with low self-esteem. ‘The gang members that I often see are the children that are completely lacking in self-confidence, often quite meek, not physically imposing at all, very shy and very lacking in self-worth.
‘The notion is that gang members are all aggressive and imposing. But the main group of children that are being targeted here... they will be children that are very vulnerable, visibly vulnerable.
‘There are gang members that are being sent out to find them. They are looking for kids they might pick on at school or at the school gates – they have their eye out.’
Penny Carpenter, Norfolk County Council’s chairman of children’s services, revealed the council had launched a £250,000 dedicated taskforce to protect children from county lines gangs. She said: ‘We are all working extremely hard but I think the parents have a role to play in this about understanding a child, knowing where that child is, about excessive phone use, or if you haven’t given them the money but they are walking in with a new pair of trainers.
‘Parents need to be aware about their own child.’
Norfolk MP and former health minister Norman Lamb said: ‘We need to confront this failure of the education system in excluding children, which leads directly to the criminal justice system.
‘We need a change of culture because the awful truth is it’s not just criminal gangs that are abandoning these children, but the state too. We’re letting a whole generation of children down.’
Crime minister Victoria Atkins said: ‘This Government is working to tackle the gang activity that has such a devastating impact on individuals, families and communities, and our Serious Violence Strategy strikes a balance between prevention and a robust law enforcement response.
‘The strategy includes a range of measures to confront county lines gangs, including the new National County Lines Co-ordination Centre, which we will establish with £3.6 million of funding. This will bring forces together, improve their understanding of this crime and support operational policing.’