REVEALED: DRUGS SHAME IN ASIAN COMMUNITIES
MPs call for ‘targeted’ strategy to fight crime
POLITICIANS and experts have urged an overhaul of the Home Office’s strategy to tackle drug-related crimes, after an Eastern Eye investigation revealed a steep increase in the number of south Asians being arrested for drug offences.
An extensive probe of 11 months by this newspaper has revealed a 40 per cent yearon-year rise in Indian, Pakistani and Bangladeshi arrests in at least one force.
Of eight police force areas with a high Asian population, analysis of data for drug offences during 2018 and 2019 – obtained using the Freedom of Information (FOI) Act – showed that in five of those, the percentage year-on-year rise was higher for Asians than black and white people.
Tan Dhesi, the Labour MP for Slough and shadow rail minister, said the police appeared to be taking a “one-size-fits-all” approach to policing.
“When we're dealing with crime, and in this case drugs, we cannot have a one-sizefits-all model. We need to look at regional disparities, at urban and rural disparities, at what is going on beneath the surface within different communities.”
The Labour MP for Birmingham Perry Barr, Khalid Mahmood, said the police
were failing to analyse the data. “They have to understand local communities, and I think also they have to understand what the links are,” he said.
“They have to get better intelligence. They should have far more officers from the Asian community, they should listen and learn from them, and give them the priority to understand what the community is like.”
Analysis by the Sentencing Council also reveals that Asians are 1.5 times more likely to be immediately jailed than white offenders, with black people 1.4 times more likely.
For decades, drug services refused to acknowledge that usage and dealing existed in south Asian communities. It was the work in the 1980s of now Professor, Lord Patel of Bradford, which showed that Asians were using, producing and distributing drugs.
This reporter worked with Lord Patel to investigate and highlight the lack in intelligence gathering almost 25 years ago.
More than two decades on, things have got worse in Asian communities, according to dealers, former dealers and experts.
“We as a society ignored it, we as the Asian community ignored it, lots of services ignored it,” said Lord Patel. “We were not collecting ethnic data to identify hotspots and what was happening, and that enabled a larger criminal market and a more sophisticated criminal market to grow. Something I predicted many years ago would inevitably happen.”
By talking to former and current dealers, Eastern Eye can reveal what has changed in a quarter of a century, or a generation ago:
• Where once Asians stuck to heroin, they have branched out into other Class A drugs.
• The use of organised crime syndicates and county line gangs has increased with routes across England. From Bradford the drugs are couriered to Manchester, then sent to Stoke/Birmingham (West Midlands), Derby/Nottingham, Leicester (East Midlands), Bristol (the south-west), Slough (the south-east) and onto London.
• Organised criminals worked along familial lines with brothers, uncles, aunts and in-laws all involved in the trade. But over time, the criminal ties have become even slicker and harder to catch.
• Where once children were kept away, some as young as seven are now being groomed for drug and gun running.
• It is the same with south Asian women. Where once they would be off-limits, girls as young as 14 are now being deliberately hooked on heroin, crack, cocaine and crystal meth and forced into prostitution, dealing and distribution.
At 33, Kalpana* from Leicester is a veteran in the drugs trade, fast climbing up her syndicate’s ladder. If there were seven levels from street dealer to drug lord, she is on the fourth rung. She has her own driver, can earn up to £5,000 per week, and the group above her can make £10,000. She has never been caught.
“No one will ever guess that I deal,” she told Eastern Eye. “I’m respectable. I don’t run around, I don’t drive around. They come to me for appointments to buy their cues [seven ounces of heroin, crack or cocaine].
“It’s been difficult with the lockdown and Covid, but I’m still earning. I’ve never been convicted, never been suspected because I keep my mouth shut. I go for those who are employed on a regular income and want their fix, who I have known and who are not noticeable. The Mr Bigs are even cleverer, right under the noses of the police.”
But her story is one Eastern Eye has heard time and again, where an Asian man hooks a woman from the community on drugs.
“When I look back, I realise I had been tricked [by a man] into taking a smoke laced with heroin,” Kalpana said.
“They knew what they were doing. They needed runners, and I was an easy target. First it was free, then once they knew I was hooked, they asked for money.
“I had no choice but to move in with him, and start to sell, distribute so I could feed the habit. He kept a watch on me and made sure I did as I was told, and that I made enough.”
Luckily Kalpana was not forced into prostitution, but she knows other Asian girls, some as young as 14, are expected to become sex workers to feed their habit and bring in cash for their pimp.
In England and Wales, government figures reveal that between 2018 and 2019, the number of arrests for white suspects went down by almost three per cent, while they went up by more than three per cent for Asians and 1.3 per cent for black people.
What the data shows is that more Asian children are getting involved in the drugs trade, in socalled county line gangs.
Although a child is defined as anyone under 18, children under-10 cannot be arrested.
Criminal justice statistics supplied by the government show that for children, there was a 29 per cent increase in the number of Asians arrested during 2018 and
2019, from 31 to 40. This is substantially higher than for white and black children at zero and nine per cent increase year-onyear, respectively.
But these figures may not be accurate because one force which did break down arrests by ethnicity and age, revealed a surprising statistic.
Greater Manchester’s FOI data showed that for Asians aged between 11 and 17, police arrested 28 and 30 during 2018 and 2019, respectively.
That is a seven per cent yearon-year rise, and the arrest figures are almost the total data for all of England and Wales.
The Home Office did not explain why there was an anomaly.
Even when a child wants to leave, it may not be possible, according to a former detective superintendent from the Metropolitan Police.
Shabnam Chaudhri was an undercover police officer for many years with “prolific and high-level drug dealers”. She left the force in December 2019 but did lead the gangs’ unit in Hackney, east London.
Gangs would groom children, especially young girls, outside the school gates, by offering them things they did not have, such as trainers or gave them pocket money, she said.
They would become messengers and couriers of guns and drugs, because the authorities would not suspect them of doing anything illicit. But once they could travel unaccompanied, they would be sent across county lines on public transport with cash and drugs, she told Eastern Eye.
“The kids, travelling from London to Birmingham to Manchester, think they are going to an address. Before they get there, they get robbed deliberately by those that have already targeted them to groom. And then they’re owned by them. [They are told] ‘You now owe me £2,000, because you lost my drugs, and now you’re going to have to start working for me.’”
Chaudhri described it as “a horrible, tragic cycle for the children to get involved in”.
“These kids don’t actually realise the tragedy that they are walking into. They don’t go into some beautiful five-star hotel, they get locked in rooms. They get to have drugs secreted into them, and they’re so petrified of the threats made to their families and extended families, that’s how they get involved.”
But there remains a problem, because the police are not investigating data properly, sources told Eastern Eye.
Lord Patel, who pioneered the research into drug use in south Asian communities, warned that without proper methodological collection and analysis, the police would not know how the criminal market was growing.
“We actually can make predictions. We can assess what’s happening and what’s going wrong. Unless everybody’s collecting the same data in the same manner, and collating it, analysing it, then I’m not sure how you run a service effectively,” he said.
This was evidenced during Eastern Eye’s investigation. Some forces responded by saying that the “information is not recorded in an easily retrievable format. To locate, retrieve and extract the requested information requires a manual search of all records held.”
“I’m extremely concerned to see these alarming reports of women and young children being groomed to undertake county lines,” Slough’s MP Dhesi told
Eastern Eye. “That’s why I think we need to work now collectively, with the police and the authorities, to make sure that we try to stamp this out.”
MP Khalid Mahmood said he believed the underlying reason was the cut in funding for community resources, leading to a generation of bored teenagers turning to gangs and violence.
The growing number of Asian children being suspended from school also added to the problem, he said. But he wanted the police to recruit more Asian officers to help tackle the crime.
“What I don’t agree with is the police using informers. And part of the problem the police have is using informants to provide intelligence that is very skewed, because they will protect themselves and be negative in terms of everything else.
“So instead of that, we need police officers who understand the community, understand the language, and understand the culture and get that across.”
Dhesi has asked Eastern Eye for more information about the investigation. He said he would speak to the Thames Valley chief constable about the rise in county line and organised gangs in the Asian communities.
“Enough is enough. We really need to get the police on board. I don’t think there should be taboo subjects with regards to drug use. We need to tackle that head on now, because if we don’t, it will impact all of us,” he said.
■ Next week, Eastern Eye reports on what police are doing to tackle county line gangs, and reveals the experiences of two former drug dealers high up in organised crime.
*Names have been changed to protect identities.