Track your kids with GPS to save them from county lines gangs, urge police
PARENTS should track children via GPS to prevent them falling prey to drugs gangs, Britain’s top county lines officer has urged.
nikki Holland, director of investigations at the national Crime agency, revealed police have saved more than 1,000 children from the clutches of county lines gangs in the last 12 months – and warned ‘decent kids’ are now more vulnerable to exploitation.
Her comments mark the first anniversary of the national County Lines Coordination Centre, which was set up to tackle the phenomenon in which city gangs expand operations into small towns, often targeting young people to sell drugs via mobile phones.
She said: ‘Know what your kids are doing. If you have got things like a tracker [such as the ‘Find My iPhone app’], if you know where your child is and suddenly they are geo-locating 50 miles from home, there is a problem, isn’t there?’ Figures show police in England and Wales have smashed a fifth of the 2,000 known drugs operations since the £3.6million unit was set up last September.
In the last year, 403 county lines networks have been shut down or disrupted, with 1,882 arrests including hundreds of children, some as young as 12.
Regional organised crime squads have also rescued around 1,000 children, many of whom were forced to peddle drugs on streets hundreds of miles from home.
In one instance, a 16-year- old Merseyside boy was found at a
‘Decent children are targets too’
drugs den in York. But Miss Holland said parents must keep tabs on their children’s whereabouts as police cannot arrest their way out of the epidemic.
asked whether parents should use GPS to track children, she said: ‘Yes. Lots do, don’t they? Friends of mine who have kids of a younger age, they all geo link. It astounds me that the kids allow them to do it, but they do.’ She said GPS apps and smartwatches were a ‘ great tool’ as it is becoming harder for police to spot victims, with gangs targeting youngsters from ‘ every walk of life’.
Miss Holland added: ‘ Previously people would have said someone who is dealing drugs looks like a drug user, for example, and it is obvious because they are hanging around and they look a bit strange or they are poor kids.
‘It’s not like that any more. The major cities have had some big success around county lines, but some of the consequences of that is [operations] have been pushed out into the rural locations.
‘You are now getting what society would class as a decent kid, not a kid who perhaps is subject to poverty or out of education.’
She said this helps gangs to slip beneath the radar as the teenage runners do not ‘stand out’ or fit the typical profile.