The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
Reece’s attitude towards the young people
he exploits is common among county line recruiters, according to Tara Mcgovern, a detective chief superintendent in the Metropolitan Police’s gangs unit. ‘Most of the recruiters that I have met don’t believe they are doing anything ethically wrong,’ she says. Mcgovern believes older gang members who have been dealing from a young age feel it’s acceptable to groom children and profit from their crimes.
The authorities have struggled to contain the rapid expansion of county lines, even though the NCA published its initial assessment of the phenomenon in 2015. Part of the problem has been a lack of coordination between regional police forces to share intelligence and monitor and target criminal organisations that operate in multiple counties. ‘Young people in the counties might have been arrested for possession with intent to supply [drugs] – but regional police forces weren’t looking at what was behind that,’ says Mcgovern. ‘They may well have been part of wider organised crime and being exploited themselves. The operating model for county lines gangs allows the main organisers to be very hands-off in terms of being near the drugs or connected to the acts of violence.’
However, on 21 September last year the £3.6 million National County Lines Coordination Centre came into being. A multi-agency body, it combines NCA and regional organised-crime units to build up a more complete intelligence picture of such operations. In March the London Mayor’s Office for Policing and Crime provided more than £3 million in funding for Out There Response and Rescue, a three-year project to deliver support for young people who are at risk of being exploited by county lines gangs.
Over 2017 and 2018 more than 4,000 county line suspects were arrested, and in 2018, for the first time, the police started to charge county line gang leaders under the Modern Slavery Act. It’s a conscious effort not to just punish those exploiting children but to stigmatise them. In a landmark case, Mahad Yusuf, 21, and Fesal Mahamud, 20, became the first to be convicted of human trafficking in this way; they were sentenced in April last year to serve nine and 10 years respectively after they forced a teenager to conceal drugs in her body before transporting her from London to Wales to work as a dealer – Yusuf destroyed her phone, telling her that ‘you belong to me’. This case was followed by that of Zakaria Mohammed, 21, who was jailed for 14 years in October for trafficking two children, aged 14 and 15, from Birmingham to rural Lincolnshire to deal drugs. Mohammed’s conviction came after police identified a car registered in his name making regular trips to the target markets in Lincolnshire, often with teenage passengers. When his car was pulled over by the police they discovered a phone connected to a county line codenamed ‘Castro’ as well as a school uniform that belonged to a missing child from Birmingham.
Despite the new policing measures, more and more children are being used in drugs gangs, according to charities in the field. Rhiannon Sawyer is an area manager for The Children’s Society, which runs a programme to prevent such exploitation across London, Manchester and Birmingham. She has seen a rise in the number of 12- and 13-year-olds going missing in London over the last 18 months and believes new police projects are not yet having any effect at street level. ‘We’re hearing accounts of gangs trading very young children like commodities,’ says Sawyer. ‘They are selling their phone numbers for money – and criminal exploitation often leads to sexual exploitation. The use of children by these gangs is so ingrained now that a quick resolution to the problem just isn’t realistic.’
Dr Qasim believes dismantling existing networks will be difficult. ‘So far, the police have been much too slow,’ he says. ‘Once a county line has been set up, it’s almost too late. It’s very hard to destroy that network. In a way it’s like a football team: players and even managers can be replaced without disrupting the team’s performance.’
Sitting outside the café in Swansea, Reece agrees that gangs are shrugging off the increased police scrutiny. ‘Of course it is getting more dangerous – but it is too profitable,’ he says as he finishes his cappuccino. ‘The risk is worth the reward. Right now I’m taking £3,000 or £4,000 a day. If you are running a line in London that takes £500 a day you will be killed for it easily.’
Should he be caught and convicted for his dealing, Reece says the money will still roll in. ‘I know I will probably go to prison – but I also know that my partners will make sure that I am still getting paid profits while I am inside. I am paying out for some of my partners that are in prison right now – and it’s not cheap.’ And even if he is arrested it will only be a matter of hours before his line is restaffed and fully operational again.
‘The kids are already committing violent crimes. At least here they have got some money and focus’