Gang members jailed for 211 years

DETECTIVES in one rural county have locked up county lines gang members for a total of more than 200 years, it was revealed yesterday.

Gloucestershire Police have arrested 200 people linked to county lines since November 2016, and 70 offenders have been jailed for a combined 211 years.

Operation Tarak was launched after the rural force was invaded by drug runners working for organised networks based in cities such as Birmingham and London.

Many of the couriers were children recruited by gangsters who lavished them with gifts. Yesterday, as the force reached the 200-sentence milestone, Detective Chief Inspector Neil Smith said: ‘I am very proud of the work done by our officers in achieving such a successful conviction rate, but I want to reassure the public that the work continues.

‘My teams are committed to tracing county lines back to their origin to disrupt and dismantle them.

‘We regularly travel across the UK to hunt down dealers and identify those recruiting young, vulnerable children to traffic and sell drugs. The dealers feel they are invisible as they live hundreds of miles away. News flash – they are not.’