46 arrested in crackdown on county lines gangs

Police have arrested 46 people in connection with county lines gang activity in a series of raids on addresses across the north of England and Scotland on Tuesday. Raids took place in Merseyside, Lancashire and Cumbria, with officers seizing a ‘significant’ amount of class-A drugs.

The operation, Project Medusa, saw police forces teaming up to deploy officers at airports and railway stations across the north in a heightened effort to clamp down on drug dealing and child criminal exploitation.

Yesterday’s police action followed three successful Project Medusa operations conducted by Merseyside Police with other force areas including Cumbria, Cheshire, Staffordshire, Northumbria and North Wales where a number of arrests and seizures of drugs, weapons and mobile phones were carried out.

County lines gangs often target vulnerable children, particularly those within the care system, to transport drugs from inner cities to smaller outlying communities in an effort to expand their operations. Young people who are exploited in this way will quite often be exposed to physical, mental and sexual abuse, and in some instances will be trafficked to areas a long way from home as part of the network’s drug dealing business. 

Home secretary, Priti Patel, said, “I’ve seen first-hand the vital work the police are doing to disrupt county lines gangs and it’s great to see them continuing to deliver these impressive results.

“I will not tolerate these abhorrent gangs that exploit children and vulnerable people and we will do everything in our power to tackle this issue head on.”

Sources: theguardian.com, 26 February 2020, ‘Dozens arrested across north of UK in raids on county lines drug gangs’, BBC.co.uk, 26 February 2020, ‘County lines: police arrest 46 in raids across the UK’.