Javid: I’ll wage war on child slave drug gangs
SAJID Javid today pledges a ‘fightback’ against ‘evil’ drugs gangs enslaving tens of thousands of vulnerable children.
In a hard-hitting message, the Home Secretary announced he is taking action against the ‘cowardly’ criminals who ‘ruin lives and damage society’.
He said it was ‘chilling’ that children as young as 12 were being lured into becoming drug mules – and unwittingly ensnared in a web of brutality and intimidation.
His crackdown focuses on the ‘ county lines’ networks, where gangs based in Britain’s big cities use boys and girls as ‘ couriers’ to flood small market towns and seaside resorts with heroin and crack cocaine.
Mr Javid launched the drive after the Mail ‘brought into sharp focus’ the terrifying scale of the problem blighting the country. In one county, norfolk, 126 children were arrested as part of a major crackdown.
More than 1,000 county line gangs are believed to operate in Britain – a 40 per cent rise in just one year – making an estimated £1.8billion annual profit between them. their operations are named after the highly lucrative telephone lines used to organise the illegal trade.
In an article for the Mail, Mr Javid announced the opening of a new £3.6million national County Lines Coordination Centre, which will allow police forces to share intelligence and target gangs operating over a wide area.
He also said that 200 investigations are under way and several large- scale police raids will take place over the next few weeks to ‘relentlessly pursue’ the gangs.
Meanwhile, police forces said that criminals were using rape, punishment beatings and even amputations to seize and dominate new markets.
the 38-strong Coordination Centre team will be made up of experts from the national Crime Agency (nCA) – dubbed Britain’s FBI – police forces and Regional organised Crime units.
As well as targeting serious offenders, it will work with health, education and welfare chiefs to prevent youngsters from being drawn into the underworld.
Vince o’Brien, head of drugs operations for the nCA, said: ‘We have not always been as agile as we might have been in terms of joining up between the various different agencies and forces.’ He said the new cenment tre would try to identify the scale of the problem and pinpoint hotspots for large drug networks around the uK.
Deputy Assistant Commissioner Duncan Ball, gangs spokesman for the national Police Chiefs’ Council, said: ‘the very nature of county lines offending means that we can only truly tackle it by bringing together all uK police forces, law enforce- agencies and other partners to create a unified national response.
‘We will now have the opportunity to better identify and target those criminal networks who run county lines and, with partners, safeguard vulnerable children and adults who are exploited.’
Earlier this week, Children’s Commissioner Anne Longfield said the true number of children being enslaved as drug runners could be as high as 50,000.
Criminals recruit them from children’s homes or outside city schools – or using social media. they are lured into becoming mules by being promised money, drugs, designer clothes or protection.
Police say gangs are using machetes, boiling water, knives, bats and hammers to terrorise anyone who steps out of line.
Humberside Police reported a young man involved with a county lines network whose hand was chopped off and both legs broken. A Home office document said: ‘It is suggested to be a punishment attack by the persons the victim was running drugs for, for having used drugs or spent the proceeds.’
SCANDAL OF THE ‘CHILD SLAVE’ DRUG RUNNERS From Monday’s Mail
THIS week, the Mail’s shocking investigation has exposed how ‘county lines’ drug gangs have spread their tentacles from inner cities to market towns and enslaved children as young as 12 – often from the care system – to peddle heroin and crack cocaine.
And while some police forces have taken the fight to the dealers, others have been woefully flat-footed.
So this paper wholeheartedly welcomes Home Secretary Sajid Javid’s bold acceptance of the scale of the problem, which, he says, is ‘devastating communities’ across the country, and his announcement of a new intelligence co-ordination centre.
He will not solve the problem overnight, but this is a positive first step.
NOBODY involved in Britain’s shambolic railways comes off well from the damning report into this year’s timetable chaos. Profiteering rail bosses, a supine regulator and utter ministerial incompetence combined to cause misery for millions of passengers.
The Mail has grave doubts whether yet another review of the industry will solve these deep-rooted problems. Two things will make a difference, however: a relentless crackdown on the dinosaur unions who hold the travelling public to ransom with the threat of strikes, and a powerful regulator to knock heads together.