Police seize £2.7m drugs in north-east raids in year

Drugs totalling £2.7million have been seized from the streets of the north-east in just a year, with police raiding almost 10 properties a week.

Huge quantities of cocaine, crack, heroin and cannabis have been found in Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire and Moray by officers in busts.

And yesterday the Press and Journal caught a glimpse into the region’s underworld of narcotics when we joined police on a raid in the city.

Officers stormed a flat in Regent Court, Seaton, cuffing and strip-searching the occupants before deploying sniffer dogs as a quantity of cannabis was seized.

Deafening slams of a battering ram, yells of “police!” and dust from a destroyed door filled the air when officers broke through.

More than 500 warrants like this were executed in the last year by police in the north-east.

At the morning briefing, a team of eight officers were told the force had received intelligence that an English-based organised crime group with links to Birmingham was operating from a base at the high rise in Seaton, Aberdeen.

Officers, wearing stab vests and protective gear under their plain clothes, piled into unmarked cars and set off to the flat block in convoy. The team instantly sprang into action on arriving at the block.

Within an instant, three people inside were cuffed as other officers carried out a search of the building during the slick operation.