1,500 more county lines drugs gangs in just a year
The disturbing scale of the county lines epidemic was laid bare yesterday as new figures showed drug operations doubled in a year.
More than 3,000 gangs were reported by police in 2019 – double the 1,500 of 2018, a National Crime Agency report revealed.
It is a four-fold increase since 2017 when there were 720 operations shipping heroin and crack cocaine from cities to provincial towns.
The term county lines refers to the individual phone lines used by gangs to sell and distribute drugs.
Despite a crackdown by forces, figures from the National County Lines Coordination Centre show 800 to 1,100 phone lines advertising drugs are active every month.
Gangs are recruiting an army of youngsters to replace those arrested for dealing, with the report warning that children as young as 11 are being intimidated into becoming ‘runners’.
And the number of young people being groomed to become money mules – so criminals can access their savings accounts – has shot up by 26 per cent since 2017.
The report warns: ‘exploitation in county lines drugs supply remains the most frequently identified form of coerced criminality with children the vast majority of victims.’
The explosion in the drugs menace has been fuelled by a 290 per cent increase in cocaine consumption in the UK since 2011.
It has led to a surge in related murders which now represent 47 per cent of all homicides, compared with 36 per cent in 2008/9. A third of victims and two- thirds of suspects in murder and manslaughter cases are now either known drugs users or suppliers, according to the NCA.
Firearms offences have also increased by 38 per cent in the five years to 2018/19, partly as a result of gang wars.
The NCA National Strategic Assessment estimates the UK cocaine market is worth up to £11.8billion annually.
More than a third of all organised crime gangs in Britain are involved in drugs activity.
Cocaine traffickers are flooding the UK with drugs from South America using commercial and passenger ferry traffic from europe, shipping containers and yachts.
Border police have seen a substantial increase in heroin busts.
The report also warned seizures of cannabis from the US and Canada have soared, with more confiscated in the first three months of 2019 than the whole of 2018.
Yesterday NCA director general Lynne Owens said overall serious and organised crime is continuing to pose a major threat with 4,772 organised gangs in operation.
‘We now estimate there to be at least 350,000 individuals in the UK engaged in serious and organised crime,’ she said.
‘It continues to kill more people than any other national security threat, and has a corrosive impact on the UK and its citizens.’
her warning comes just days after the Crown Prosecution Service published new guidance telling police to delay bringing charges in organised crime cases so the courts do not become clogged up during the coronavirus outbreak.
‘Corrosive impact on the country’