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Jake the police dog smokes out tobacco ring
A SNIFFER dog has helped police smash a lucrative counterfeit tobacco ring in a national first.
Jake, a German Shepherd, hauled in a batch of 2,000 fake cigarettes, that were being sold by organised cartels of failed Iraqi asylum seekers in the Nag’s Head area on Saturday.
It is the first time a dog has been used for such an operation and took Jake less than two hours to find the imitation Benson & Hedges cigarettes, that were concealed in a shopkeeper’s box of bananas on Seven Sisters Road.
Police were tipped off by a concerned trader.
The Nag’s Head Safer Neighbourhoods team recovered 4,500 counterfeit cigarettes in four separate busts during the two-hour operation on Saturday.
Police say the bust is a major coup as the cartels are so well organised – employing sophisticated counter-surveillance tactics to thwart them.
Sergeant Stuart Simpson, who led the operation said: “They have all the usual tricks, hiding cigarettes in rubbish bins, buses and even under the floorboards.
They communicate by text messages and know most of the plain-clothes officers, so it has been very difficult to get to them until now.”
The bust is part of a wider police crackdown on the illegal market in tobacco which has seen them seize more than 1.5 million cigarettes, with a street value of over £100,000, this year alone.
The gangs typically work in groups of five outside Argos, Halifax and in the Nag’s Head market, selling cartons of 200 cigarettes, that are smuggled in from China and Poland at half their retail price.
The trade in illegal ‘street’ tobacco, which is nine times more toxic than tobacco sold in the shops, has thrived over the past 10 years.
Since the crackdown, the number of illegal traders in the area has fallen from 74 to just 10.
Jake previously worked with the parks patrol and received a week’s training before being used in the operation.
The cunning canine sniffed out cigarettes that had been planted in his toys and was so good he ended up finding two illegal stashes. He is now being trained to sniff out the cellophane wrapping on pirate DVDs.
Sergeant Simpson said: “Using the dog should deter illegal traders and provide us with intelligence which will ultimately help secure a conviction. I would like to reassure the local community that the sale of counterfeit goods in the Nag’s Head area will not be tolerated.” |
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