Fightback against county lines kingpins
EIGHTEEN county lines drug kingpins have been jailed following raids during the coronavirus lockdown.
Across London between March 16 and May 20 drug trafficking arrests went up by 55 per cent.
The total soared from 1,431 in the same period in 2019 to 2,232 while charges went up 143 per cent from 346 to 841.
County lines operations involve drug gangs in cities sending vulnerable people, often children, to rural areas to sell to addicts using dedicated phone lines for sales.
The Met Police has worked with police forces where London-based dealers have been sending drug runners to supply the local market with heroin and cocaine.
Officers found that by taking out the kingpin responsible for the mobile phone line used to sell the drugs the operations crumbled anyway.
Operation Orochi saw these “line holders” targeted by police.
A Met spokesman said: “Many of the Met’s previous arrests made for county lines offending across London were those running the drugs – often the exploited and vulnerable.
“So to more systematically dismantle county lines from the centre, the strategic approach of Orochi was to target the line holders.
“Since Orochi started police have closed 87 county lines and achieved 183 charges for drug trafficking. Of the 18 cases which have gone to court so far, all defendants have pleaded guilty and received a total of more than 50 years imprisonment.”
The biggest success has been in Norfolk where 20 county lines rackets were shut down.
Wayne Mann, 35, from Beckenham, south London, was jailed for four years and two months in April.
He was found to be in control of two phone numbers that distributed drugs in Norwich.
Many of those convicted under Operation Orochi were repeat offenders.
Younis Farjani, 18, was convicted in 2016 of the manslaughter of Haile Langa, 21, over a £2,000 drugs debt, while brother Imaan Farjani, 23, was acquitted. Younis was given a seven-year youth detention sentence but was released in June last year.
Within three months the pair were dealing again in the Rochester area of Kent, with the older brother running a line called Omar.
They were snared in the new operation withyounis jailed for 39 months and Imaan 42 months.
Ricardo Bogle, 39, from Brent, north-west London, was caught trying to stash a package of drugs behind a shop counter in Highwycombe.
He was charged with possession with intent to supply and pleaded guilty, getting a jail term of five years and seven months.when Bogle was arrested he had not long been out from an earlier nine-year sentence for being a county lines boss of a gang flooding class A drugs into Southampton.
Tamer Bodur, 22, was found running a line selling drugs in Medway, Kent, from his east London bedroom late last year. Police found heroin, cocaine, a large amount of cash, several knives and a CS gas canister.
He admitted the offences and was jailed for five years and two months.
In March, Joshua Goldring-wells, 25, from Deptford, south London, was arrested in a raid on a Kent property.
He was jailed for five years and eight months for possession with intent to supply crack cocaine and heroin at Canterbury Crown Court in April.
Less than four years ago he was arrested in Folkestone, Kent, and convicted of the same offence at the same court in August 2016 when he was jailed for four years and four months.
Another drug kingpin to be arrested during the crackdown was Cameron Johnson, 22, of Thanet, Kent, who was jailed for 48 months.
A Met Police spokesman added: “Of those arrested 61 per cent had previous convictions for violence and 64 per cent had previous convictions for weapons.
“Only one line holder was female. Only one phone being used to run a line was registered, albeit in a false name, and every other phone was an unregistered pay as you go device.”