Drug dealers targeting ‘well-dressed, middle-class’ kids as parents warned to be vigilent
Melanie Onn, the Labour MP for Great Grimsby, said drug dealers were increasingly exploiting children who look ‘respectable’ in places which criminals consider to be police ‘blind spots’
DRUG dealers are targeting leafy suburban streets and using children from affluent backgrounds to peddle drugs, a Labour MP has claimed.
Melanie Onn, the Labour MP for Great Grimsby, said drug dealers were increasingly exploiting children who look ‘respectable’ in places which criminals consider to be police ‘blind spots’.
Her comments in Parliament echo concerns by the National Crime Agency (NCA) that dealers are targeting children as young as 12 to sell drugs in rural areas through a criminal enterprise known as ‘county lines’.
‘County lines’ drug trading sees young people recruited by dealers to set up and sell drugs in out-of-town locations, using a specific mobile phone number to take orders in the area.
The NCA said ‘county lines’ are present in every police force in the country and have led to a spike in violence and a rise in addiction in many areas.
Ms Onn, the shadow housing minister, told Parliament: “Recently I received reports of drugs being dealt from nice middle class homes in quiet areas where the police usually have little cause to go.
“The criminals consider those areas to be police blind spots. As I said, the attention given to tackling the source of the drugs has had a real impact on the local community.
"People feel very frightened in their neighbourhoods.”
Ms Onn, 38, said: “The police have to tackle crime gangs who are ever more inventive at operating through young people, and not just the young people I expected.
“In a meeting with the police last week, I was talking about vulnerable children being exploited.
"I was thinking about disadvantaged, marginalised and look-after children, but I was told that the young people now being targeted by gangs are those who are well dressed and look respectable.
“They are completely unassuming and the police would never think to stop them or suspect that they were involved in criminal activity.”
Keith Hunter, Humberside Police’s elected crime commissioner, added: “The targeting of children as a means of distributing drugs is a hugely concerning trend that police are actively working to counter nationally.”
Their comments follow a similar warning from the NCA who said white British children were increasingly being targeted ‘because groups believe they are less likely to be targeted by law enforcement.’
The NCA estimated that half the communities targeted by ‘county lines’ were small coastal towns.
For the gangs, it means, according to NCA figures, an average of £2,000 a day for every ‘county lines’ operation they set up.
Meanwhile a report by the ‘All Party Parliamentary Group on Runaway and Missing Children and Adults’ last year said children as young as eight from ‘stable and economically better-off’ backgrounds were being exploited by gangs.
Gangs keep children in their service by enforcing drug debts – regularly inflated or made up – and by threatening family members to ensure they remain obedient.
Tom Saggers, the former head of drugs threat and intelligence at the NCA, said: "It has become a national problem in the scheme of things almost overnight.
"It’s a growing problem based upon the success of what is basically a very ruthless business model.”
As well as being in police ‘blind spots’, middle-class areas are home to clients willing to spend around three times the going rate for a gram of cocaine.
They are willing to fork out £150 for a gram of cocaine, rather than the going rate in the cities of £50.
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Last month Simon Kempton, of the Police Federation of England and Wales, warned that wealthy white middle class cocaine users were fuelling a rise in violence on the streets.
Justice Secretary David Gauke said they should feel ‘guilty and responsibility’ for the surge of fatal stabbings in the UK.
He said: “There is a responsibility for middle-class people who take cocaine at a dinner party, that when they see a story of a 15-year-old being stabbed in Hackney, they should feel a degree of guilt and responsibility."