Children as Young as Nine Recruited by County Lines Gangs, Britain’s Biggest Children’s Charity Reveals
12th October 2019
In case you haven’t been keeping track of the behavioral sink that is modern Britain, they have a bit of a drug problem.
Children as young as nine are being recruited by county lines gangs as they increasingly target middle class “clean skins” to run drugs, the crime chief for Britain’s biggest children’s charity has revealed.
County lines gangs “exploit children and teenagers to take drugs from urban centres to country towns.” (No, I have no idea where they got that name — I suppose it’s a British thing.)
Ms Gradwell cited one case of a middle class child whose parents had disciplined him by “grounding him” at home and taken away his mobile phone.
So sophisticated is the intelligence networks of the gangs that he was identified and befriended. “The young lad got chatting with a gang member who offered him his spare phone,” said Ms Gradwell.
“They got friendly, then the next stage was: ‘I gave you a phone when you most needed it, now can you do me a favour and drop this package off.’”
After a series of similar jobs, he started getting a cut of the money, at which point the gang set up a “mugging” in which the drugs were stolen from the child. “He could not pay for them and became indebted,” said Ms Gradwell.
How long before this trick shows up in De Blasio’s New York City?