Drone downed while smuggling drugs into jail is picked up by a fox... with VERY alarming results
IT IS one of the major factors driving violence in prisons – criminal gangs using drones to fly drugs and mobile phones to cell windows. But when police in London tried to enforce a new law banning all drones from 400 metres of jails it became a farcical Keystone Cops affair, thanks to a less-than-cunning fox.
It happened near HMP Wandsworth in South London, where neighbours say they were woken by the noise of police attempting to intercept a drone seen flying towards the prison.
One witness said that in trying to evade capture the drone got caught in a tree; firemen managed to reach the device and knock it out but before the police could seize it, it was picked up by a ‘quick off the mark’ urban fox – which the officers then pursued.
During the chase, they were alerted by the ‘yelping’ of the animal, which had apparently eaten some of the drugs the drone was carrying, and was now ‘fitting’.
The police were enforcing the nofly zones that have been legally introduced around all prisons by the Ministry of Justice since the end of last month. Previously, officers could act only where there was evidence of contraband being smuggled.
Drone operators who break the rules will be fined up to £2,500 while those smuggling illicit items may face up to a decade behind bars.
Figures show that the number of drones captured or sighted within prison grounds more than doubled between 2019 and 2021.
They carry drugs such as spice, which increases the levels of violence and aggression among inmates, and mobile phones – which are then used to order more contraband.
Neither Wandsworth Prison nor the Ministry of Justice would comment on the fox story, except to point to comments by Prisons Minister Edward Argar saying the Government was ‘working harder than ever to prevent the smuggling of contraband into our prisons’.