Police assaults on drugs gangs determined and courageous
Jason Evans describes how police set about bringing down drugs gangs in Swansea – and how two police officers put themselves at risk to uncover the networks
AHEROIN deal is a brutally simple transaction – hand over £10, and in return a dealer will destroy your life.
It is a wretched and ruthless business that blights lives.
A lucrative business for those at the top, gangs are able to generate thousands of pounds a day in revenue.
The addict on the street is at the end of a chain of dealers, traffickers, couriers, money-launderers and fixers controlled by criminal gangs – and it is those gangs that police in Swansea set out to take down.
Swansea, in common with many other struggling coastal towns, has a long-standing drugs problem – almost a decade since the hard-hitting film Swansea Love Story highlighted the problem.
Police in Swansea had became aware of a new threat – drugs gangs from outside the area, particularly from big English cities such as Liverpool and London, extending their operations into the city.
It was this threat that Operation Blue Thames was designed to tackle.
The criminals targeting Swansea were operating using a method known as “county lines”, which sees gangs from large cities moving into smaller cities and seaside towns around the UK.
Typically the gang identifies vulnerable, often drug-addicted, people to exploit in their target town.
Through intimidation, debt, or occasionally sexual violence or exploitation, the gang takes over their homes to use as a base and as “stash houses” for drugs stock.
This part of the operation is known as “cuckooing”, after the bird which lays its eggs in other birds’ nests.
The keys to the county lines operation are pay-as-you-go phones. The mobile number is distributed to users and addicts, and essentially becomes the gang’s “brand”. Users call it to place orders.
Typically the phone is controlled by a small number of trusted gang members further up the hierarchy.
Once an order has been placed, other gang members, usually recruited locally, are dispatched. The addicts and the suppliers meet at an agreed point to complete the deal.
The stash houses are resupplied from big-city bases either by car – often rented – or public transport, while vulnerable children or young people are often used as couriers.
Gangs have also been known to traffic people to their target towns, using them as mobile drug stocks, storing the drugs inside their bodies – a technique that goes by the selfexplanatory name “plugging”.
For those at the top of the gangs the county line method allows them to exploit new markets in areas where they are not well-known to local police, while also maintaining a distance from the street dealing.
For the same reasons, the system poses challenges for police forces.
It was just these kind of operations that police in Swansea set out to break in 2017. It would eventually result in 46 people being jailed for a total of more than 180 years.
The operation revolved around two undercover police officers who immersed themselves in the Swansea drugs community – assuming the names Matt and Louise.
Police have refused to talk about their work – perhaps understandably – but their activities proved crucial. From the court cases it is possible to piece together how they worked.
After a period of intelligence gathering, in 2017 Matt and Louise began to develop contacts on the streets of Swansea, and to acquire the numbers – the lines – of gangs in the city.
The undercover officers would then place orders, arrange a rendezvous, and buy drugs from the dealers.
Many of the gangs used the same terminology – “dark” for heroin and “light” or “white” for crack cocaine – but some had more usual code words, with one using “W” for crack and “brandy” for heroin.
The gangs would also use the mobile phones to send out advertising texts – often bulk messages to hundreds of potential buyers – to let users know when new stocks arrived, or if there were special offers.
Eventually police were able to identify 10 different lines being used by dealers in the city, the detectives giving them code names such as Montana, Jack Calvin, Capo, PK Johnny, Flash and Newport Josh.
Popular deal-making locations included Neath Road in Hafod, the nearby Cwm Level Road, the streets around Rosehill Quarry and Constitution Hill in Mount Pleasant, near the shops in Gors Avenue in Townhill, and behind the Argos store in the city.
The dealer would arrive at a rendezvous after a potential buyer – usually by car, sometimes by bicycle or on foot – with the drugs.
Such was the volume of business that often a number of addicts would be told to meet at the same point at the same time so dealers could supply them all in one drop.
Once deals were done, the money would be passed back up the chain of gang members.
Slowly, over months, the undercover officers completed dozens of such deals using a host of different drugs lines. Detectives began piecing together the gang structures and roles – low-level street dealer-addicts, couriers, middlemen, people providing properties or transport, and those trafficking the drugs into Swansea.
Police were by then able to track the mobiles using “site cell analysis” – pin-pointing the location of phones when texts or calls were made or received, using data from the networks – and the locations, times and movements of the phones were then matched with movements of cars or members of the gang.
It was a laborious, but gradually detectives were able to build up a picture of how each gang operated.
Then the arrests began.
During October and November last year dozens of raids took place at houses and flats across Swansea, Neath and Port Talbot, as well as further afield.
The raids began with detailed briefings for officers. This information is crucial – officers need to know not just who they are going to arrest but also to have an idea of what they will face when they burst into a property.
Though thankfully rare, it is not unknown for officers to encounter booby traps in a target property.
The raids were led by specialists in gaining entry. Teams go in hard and fast, using a crow bar and red battering ram known as “the key” – which certainly seems to open most doors.
Doors were kicked in, and suspects arrested.
Then the painstaking work of compiling cases against each suspect began, with detectives linking times and locations of deals with phone records and usage, CCTV or surveillance footage, and forensic traces recovered from the wraps of drugs.
Presented with the weight of evidence against them, almost all the defendants pleaded guilty – a handful fought the charges but were convicted at trial.
Eventually 46 people were jailed at Swansea Crown Court for conspiracy to supply heroin and cocaine, supplying Class A drugs, being concerned in the supply of drugs, or offering drugs for supply.
Barrister Ian Wright, who prosecuted the Blue Thames cases, described the gangs’ operations as “organised and highly lucrative drug supply conspiracies”.
The court heard that gangs from Newport – who had split from larger gangs – were making as much as £3,600 a day in Swansea. The dealers either drove to Swansea and Llanelli, or caught a train – always the 10.24am from Newport – to deliver drugs. Gang members topped up their payas-you-go “lines” at the CK shop opposite Swansea train station.
The hearings also revealed surprising details of some of those involved.
One dealer turned out to be a computer science student; while the family of another had fled war-torn Kosovo in the 1990s. Another was studying business at the Open University.
The man in charge of Operation Blue Thames, South Wales Police Detective Inspector Dave Peart, praised the work of his team.
He said: “We will not tolerate urban street gangs within our area.”
The “war on drugs” continues. And the misery caused by addiction for individuals, families and communities goes on.