A Stop and Search is carried out in Southwark
(Picture: PA Wire)County lines drug dealers could be recruiting more women to evade detection, police say.
Gangsters behind the £1 billion-a-year trade believe women are less likely to be stopped and searched than young men couriering cocaine and heroin on the rail network.
Police saw the shift after trafficking laws were introduced to stop children being exploited to move drugs from areas such as London into smaller towns and cities.
A conviction for modern-day slavery can result in dealers serving prison sentences on a sex offender wing, which they are keen to avoid.
Detective Superintendent Gareth Williams, who leads British Transport Police’s national crackdown, said the number of women arrested had risen from 10 in 2020, 4.4 per cent of all those detained, to 62 (6.9 per cent) last year. In the 12 months to April 2022, 35 women have been held (6.5 per cent).
The number of teenage girls protected from harm, because they were with a dealer at the time of his arrest or found in a drug den, has doubled from four per cent of all under-18s protected in 2019 to eight per cent this year.
Mr Williams said the force has made 1,749 arrests, seized nearly £1 million of drugs, recovered 400 weapons and secured 20 charges for human trafficking since December 2019.
He said that, in a recent presentation to detectives, a reformed dealer suggested his optimal employee would be a “professional white woman because of the chances of success”. The police chief told the Standard: “We’re trying to learn more about all aspects of the county lines business model. It would be naive on behalf of policing to just consider this to be a purely male pastime.
“Nationally, we are seeing women as runners and part of the workforce. The fact that we are getting exposure to more female victims or offenders gives us an opportunity to understand it better. Stop and search figures are overwhelming male. Officers on the ground are less inclined to search women, so that may be the case.” Offenders accused of modern slavery find the case against them is “extremely compelling” with the risk of a lengthy sentence, he said.
Many plead guilty to drug supply alone in the hope that prosecutors and police “take the path of least resistance” and drop child trafficking charges.
