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An officer arrests a suspect as part of the anti-drug operation |
Drug market crackdown
Police continue to gather evidence after arresting seven
A STRING of covert police operations aimed at smashing the borough’s crack cocaine and heroin markets led to seven arrests this week.
A “Mr Big” and suspected class A drugs factory in Rylands Road, Kentish Town, were hit on Thursday as the alleged dealer arrived from Hackney with a consignment destined for Camden’s streets.
And detectives arrested two suspected dealers after weeks of painstaking observation of the streets around St Giles Church and Centrepoint in Holborn. A 19-year-old was charged with seven counts of supplying class A drugs in the West End on Thursday,
The busts form part of a new focus on the class A scene in Camden, where a flooded drugs market has seen prices reach record lows and sparked residents’ complaints over open dealing.
The New Journal observed detectives working last week in the Tottenham Court Road area, where according to Jo Weir, chairwoman of the Covent Garden Community Association: “The dealing makes life hell for people around New Compton Street and it affects people in Neal Street and Shaftesbury Avenue. A lot of our compassion is eroded because of the abuse of our open spaces and our family life.”
For several months, plain-clothes police have staked out the leafy gardens of St Giles churchyard, long a refuge for heroin and crack dealers and their clients.
In covert footage, police recorded queues of drug-users scoring their fixes as shoppers and residents walked past.
Many buyers openly smoked cocaine from stumpy crack pipes in the scant cover of the church porch or the garden’s wheelie bins.
Other tapes showed addicts growing agitated in Denmark Passage until dealers arrived to dispense both “white” – crack cocaine – and “brown”, heroin, often passing the wraps of powder from mouth to mouth.
The officer in charge of the bust, Detective Sergeant Sean Tuckey of Camden police, acknowledged that residents may have grown frustrated while his team gathered enough evidence to bring “supply” rather than possession of drugs charges.
He said: “It can take several weeks to secure the evidence that we believe will get a conviction. But this operation came about because of complaints to the Safer Neighbourhoods teams by the community in St Giles and the surrounding area, and it is still ongoing and more arrests are anticipated in the coming weeks.”
The raid on a basement flat in Rylands Road also followed weeks of observation and yielded a large seizure of crack and heroin, according to DS Andy Thomas of Camden’s newly established Crime Squad. “The entry team was able to get in so quick that they found 35 rocks of [suspected] crack cocaine on the table,” he said.
The evidence, if substantiated, would suggest a drug clearing house capable of turning over £10,000 per week and supplying the Grafton Road, Prince of Wales Road and Holmes Road areas.
Three men and two women were charged on Saturday with conspiracy to supply drugs in connection with the Kentish Town raid. |
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