Police team up with universities for blitz on county lines drug gangs posing as students before trying to recruit hard-up undergraduates
- A community support officer has been assigned to Bangor University in Wales
- Students at Bangor have been found with ‘large quantities of drugs and cash’
- Police are working with universities to stop county lines infiltrating campuses
Police are teaming up with universities to stop county lines gangs infiltrating campuses to sell drugs.
Officers have already caught some criminals signing up for courses as a front. They also fear the gangs are recruiting hard-up students on the promise of making money.
Jon Aspinall of North Wales Police said students have been found with ‘large quantities of drugs and cash’.
Police are joining up with universities to stop county lines infiltrating university campuses to sell drugs (file image). A police officer in Wales said students have been found with ‘large quantities of drugs and cash’
The force has now assigned a community support officer to Bangor University to root out offenders.
The region has been blighted by county lines crimes, named for the phone lines used to arrange deals in cities and smaller towns.
Last October physiotherapy student Seif Hashim, 20, was jailed for 30 months for running an operation from his dorm at the University of Kent.
A community support officer has been assigned to Bangor University in Wales to try to root out other offenders (file image)
What are county lines gangs and how do they operate in Britain?
County lines gangs can earn up to £1million each by recruiting teenagers and children as young as six to help them deal drugs, with those who are disabled and out of school being the most likely targets.
County lines is a drug distribution model which typically involves city gangs branching out into smaller towns or rural areas to sell heroin and crack cocaine.
They deploy vulnerable people as couriers to move drugs and cash between the new market and their urban hub.
The name given to the scheme stems from the phone lines used by dealers.
Using youngsters as drug mules, they are said to be making a combined £7million a day – around £2.5billion a year. Each county lines route is making as much as £5,000 a day.
In September 2018, a Daily Mail investigation revealed the scale of the crisis which is thought to have enslaved thousands of children – prompting an intervention from Home Secretary Sajid Javid.
A map shows how county lines routes are now well-established around the country