POLICE say they are ‘holding back the tide’ to stop organised drugs gangs from other cities moving in on Worcester.

In September last year, police launched Operation Blade to tackle the growing ‘county lines’ problem, which sees gangs from cities such as Birmingham, Liverpool and London bringing Class A drugs into Worcester.

In a wide-ranging interview with the Worcester News, Detective Chief Inspector Jerry Reakes-Williams and Detective Inspector Tony Garner, who leads Operation Blade, said the city would “very quickly” become organised gang territory and plagued by guns and knives on the streets if police lost their battle against the dealers.

DI Garner said: “This is a national problem but it’s a particularly big problem for Worcester, because it’s big enough to have a strong demand for drugs but not big enough to have its own established organised gangs selling drugs.

“It feels like we are holding back the tide. We do not have an organised crime problem in Worcester but we could have one very quickly if we don’t keep up this relentless battle against county lines dealers.

“Drug dealing is a business and we are disrupting their business and making Worcester somewhere that’s not profitable for them. Our objective is to make Worcester a hostile and dangerous place for dealers to come and operate. They are only here to make money and we are damaging their business.”

DI Garner said officers were handing out Operation Blade business cards at the scenes of arrests and raids, to let the public know what they are doing and that drug dealing won’t be tolerated.

The Operation Blade team is made up of eight detective constables and one detective sergeant, led by DI Garner.

Since September, 66 suspected drug dealers have been arrested, 20 have been charged and seven have been convicted so far, as part of Operation Blade, with 128 mobile phones and £18,000 in cash seized, as well as a range of weapons including knives, machetes, hammers, coshes, Tasers and CS gas.

DCI Reakes-Williams said: “We do believe that since we set up Operation Blade there has been a marked reduction in serious crime.”

DI Garner added: “It’s a fact that violent crime has gone down in south Worcestershire. The stop and search tactic is proving very effective. We are recovering drugs and weapons routinely.”

He also said there had been a big reduction in ‘cuckooing’, which is where dealers from other cities take over the home of a vulnerable person such as an addict and use the property to sell drugs.

“As soon as we become aware that someone has been cuckooed, we go straight in with the housing authority to offer our support,” said DI Garner. “It’s a joint approach to make that address impossible for the drug dealers to use because we will go there every day.

“So we have had a big reduction in the number of cuckooing addresses and because we’re flushing the dealers out into the open, they are on show now which means the public can really make a difference by reporting them to us.”

In November last year, a report commissioned by West Midlands Police and Crime Commissioner David Jamieson found that the average heroin user would commit between 200 and 260 offences a year, and cost the taxpayer £62,320.

DCI Reakes-Williams referred to cuts in the amount of funding given to Swanswell, the charity tasked with helping drug addicts to kick the habit in Worcestershire, and added: “We as the police are not the whole answer to the drugs problem. We are targeting the dealers. It would significantly helps us if the resources were there to help the users, to reduce the demand for drugs.”

DI Garner added: “We can maintain the position we’re in now which is that Worcester is a nice place to raise a family, because we are stopping the gangs settling in Worcester. But that pressure will continue to bear down on us until the issue of drug use is addressed.”

DCI Reakes-Williams said that, due to cuts in the number of officers in the county, police were having to prioritise which crimes they responded to first, with Operation Blade at the top of the list due to the ‘serious harm’ associated with drug dealing.

“We are having to make decisions on a daily basis about where the greatest harm is and focus our resources there,” he said. “This means that sometimes deployments to other types of crime have to be delayed. For example, where meat has been stolen from a shop and the thief is long gone, we may take longer to get there.”

DCI Reakes-Williams said that it was vital that the public reported suspected drug dealing, to help police tackle the problem in the city.

People can report drug dealing anonymously via Crimestoppers on 0800 555 111.