One of the persistent challenges that the local police have faced over the past ten years is the problem of so called "county lines" drug gangs and all the associated violence, antisocial behaviour, poverty, and ruined lives that goes with it.
Many of these gangs originate from major cities like Liverpool or the Midlands. About ten years ago they started to branch out and effectively bring their diabolical gang culture to places like Cornwall to try to make more money. Sometimes gang members move to Cornwall, and it is not unusual to see new thugs suddenly appearing on our streets with up country accents. Sometimes they dupe young people locally to get involved in their crimes. They prey on vulnerable people and often get clients in debt so that they can "cuckoo" their homes and use them as bases. Some of the antisocial behaviour that residents experience on the streets stems from conflicts between rival gangs or arguments over debts allegedly owed.
Cornwall is not the only part of the country wrestling with this phenomenal challenge. It is a national challenge but there have been some police initiatives to try to tackle it. Firstly, Devon and Cornwall Police work closely with Merseyside Police and other police forces to share intelligence on Liverpool gang members who appear in our neighbourhoods. Shifting these gangs in a sustainable way is not easy. The police can make one set of arrests only to find the new gangs or gang members arrive in their place. To work, the evidence is that you need to "clear" gang members from an area, then "hold" the area by making sure that there is highly visible and assertive policing to prevent replacements coming in and finally you need to "build" on the work you have done by working in the community to destroy the demand for drugs that brings such evil gangs to our communities in the first place and that needs concerted work across multiple agencies.
I recently met police locally to discuss some of these problems. The most important thing residents can do is feed in intelligence to the police when they see drug dealing or suspected drug dealing on our streets by these gangs. There are times when such individuals or properties are already under surveillance as the Police build an evidence base or try to identify those further up the command chain in any gang but the more information the Police have from the public the better so that, together, we can break these gangs.