Nearly six hundred people suspected of drug dealing have been arrested in an unmarried week, police have stated, as officers launch a countrywide crackdown on so-called county traces gangs. The operation focused on the networks that recruit kids and inclined adults to export the illegal pills alternate from the UK’s cities to greater rural areas. Officers took motion to defend extra than 900 human beings, inclusive of greater than 350 children. They helped greater than 30 humans notion to be at risk of human trafficking and modern-day slavery. The power additionally resulted in the seizure of extra than £300,000 in cash and 46 weapons, the National Crime Agency (NCA) stated. “Tackling county traces and the misery it causes is a countrywide law enforcement priority, and those effects display the power of a whole-system response to a complicated problem that we see in every location of the UK,” said the NCA’s director of investigations, Nikki Holland.
“We recognize that criminal networks use excessive ranges of violence, exploitation, and abuse to make sure compliance from the prone people they hire to do the everyday drug supply hobby.” Research released using the NCA in advance this yr hinted at the size of the exchange, with almost 3 times the number of telephone numbers related to it being identified that have been previously recognized approximately. The agency’s evaluation valued the illicit trade at approximately £500m in step with the year and related it to murder and sexual exploitation. On Tuesday, the NCA stated it had seized £176,780 worth of cocaine, £36,550 really worth of crack cocaine, and £17,950 worth of heroin in operation, which ran for a week Monday. In one case, police worried in operation found a 14-yr-vintage lacking girl from Cambridge in London and arrested three guys on suspicion of offenses connected to infant sexual abuse.
In every other, officers located a set of human beings they believe of taking up a prone man or woman’s domestic to apply it for drug dealing – a practice known as cuckooing. They said drugs had been thrown from the building, four humans had been arrested, and cash and belongings seized. Victoria Atkins, the minister for crime, safeguarding, and vulnerability, said: “We are decided to crack down on county traces, disrupt the networks devastating communities and positioned a stop to the violence and exploitation of youngsters and susceptible adults.” Signs that a young person may have fallen prey to a county traces gang are said to be unexpectedly having new unaffordable property, going lacking lots, having friendships with older humans, or having unexplained injuries. The gangs’ sports strike every police pressure in England and Wales, the NCA believes, while the number of cases of present-day slavery involving UK minors went from 676 in 2017 to 1,421 in 2018.
The operation became run by the National County Lines Coordination Centre (NCLCC), which is at the same time run by the NCA and the National Police Chiefs’ Council. Michael Massing’s The Fix’s dust jacket summarizes his thesis in bold red letters: “Under the Nixon Administration, America Had an Effective Drug Policy. WE SHOULD RESTORE IT. (Nixon Was Right).” That is a pretty extraordinary claim to make regarding an administration that gained office in large part through the “Southern Strategy” that had at its heart Nixon’s declaration of a “War on Drugs” and whose policies created the cocaine epidemic that caused so many new concerns a decade later. At most, I would agree that the Nixon administration’s pursuit of a fundamentally bad policy included some worthwhile efforts that every subsequent administration has devalued. This was not because Nixon or his closest advisers were right about drug policy but because Nixon was more interested in foreign policy issues. His benign neglect of domestic policy allowed several positive developments to blossom in the midst of the mire of incompetence and corruption that characterized his presidency.
