Raid targets gang using children as drug mules

An arrest is made and drugs were found in New Cross, as part of Operation Pibera.

London Evening Standard/London

Police yesterday smashed a criminal network which forced children as young as 14 to sell thousands of pounds worth of class A drugs.

Over the past six months 15 boys and girls have been arrested carrying up to 200 rocks of crack cocaine or large amounts of heroin in Kent and Hampshire. Police say children are being used as drug mules by dealers in south-east London who are seeking to expand to Portsmouth and Folkestone where competition is less hostile. They often recruit the children from schools and youth clubs.

In yesterday’s  pre-dawn raids, officers swooped on six addresses in London and four in Kent and Hampshire. They arrested four people, including most of the gang’s ringleaders.

One of the network’s chief suspects was arrested on suspicion of trafficking and conspiracy to supply class A drugs at an address in Tottenham. Crack cocaine worth £3,000 was found at the home and officers also seized £1,500 in cash from an address in Kent.

The gang’s alleged moneyman, in his twenties, was dragged into a police van outside a house in New Cross and arrested on suspicion of laundering the organisation’s proceeds.

Others were held on suspicion of supplying class A drugs as part of Operation Pibera, a three-month operation targeting the gang.

Detective superintendent Tim Champion, of Trident central gangs unit, said: “This is a gang that has evolved to use children. The controllers of the network stay in London most of the time and use the young people to take all the risks involved in drug dealing.

“They can recruit through schools or other means. They are given the promise of money or goods in exchange which never materialises.

“If drugs are lost or seized debts are incurred and the links to the organised criminal network strengthens.

“It doesn’t start with a threat, it starts with a promise. It will become mental or physical abuse at the end.”