Seventeen suspects have been arrested after an undercover operation to smash gangs supplying crack cocaine and heroin to Manchester's homeless people. Dawn raids were carried out after an eight-month investigation into drugs being sold openly on the street, just a mile from the city centre.
Police believe six drugs lines run from Miles Platting and Beswick have been smashed after officers posed as drug users to buy crack and recorded the deals. Operation Comanche was launched after families in both areas have had to live with brazen selling of drugs daily.
Both districts have seen colossal investment in recent years in new homes built round the Ashton and Rochdale Canals. But they have been blighted by dealers who are making huge profits to finance flash lifestyles peddling misery to the homeless.
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One suspect has been spending £1,500 a month hiring a top-of-the-range car. Cash is also being splashed on designer clothes, jewellery, and watches.
Detective Sergeant Dan Pickavance, of GMP's North Manchester Division, said: "It is very lucrative indeed. They are preying on their vulnerabilities. The people we have identified as being behind this, are themselves living Love Island lifestyles, on the back of selling heroin to drug users.
"It is absolutely disgraceful. It is disgusting. I hate it."
Rivalry between different drugs factions is behind a spate of tit-for-tat shootings in the districts. As well as supplying homeless with drugs, the gangs have also made Miles Platting a place for "functioning" addicts to buy.
In dawn raids today eight people were held - seven men and one woman - on suspicion of offering to supply undercover officers drugs; possession with intent to supply class A and B drugs; money laundering; and being concerned with the supply of Class A drugs.
Other suspects were arrested yesterday and in total GMP are targeting 21 people. Homes in Miles Platting, Droylsden, and Beswick were raided, and another suspect is being sought in Cambridgeshire. Police also recovered weapons, including a terrifying serrated zombie knife kept under a sofa in a house where a one-year-old lives, plus large amounts of cash, drugs, and designer clothes.
Detective Sergeant Pickavance, said: "I have worked north Manchester for pretty much all of my career, which is 14 years. I have always been aware that there's a drug dealing problem in Miles Platting and Beswick areas. However more recently I have seen that issue become more prevalent, more visual, it is open air drug dealing. I have never seen that before in Manchester. I have never seen it so brazen and unchallenged.
"We wanted to put in an operation to clear the decks and then some kind of framework to stop this continuing to happen. It is all crack cocaine and heroin, and their entire market almost is the homeless and rough sleeping population, from the city centre.
"There's three waves every single day. You get the early morning trade from about 9am to 10am, where you will see drug users coming into Miles Platting and Beswick to purchase class A drugs with money they have begged. They then disappear back into the city centre to their begging spots.
"They come back at one to two o'clock in the afternoon to purchase from well established drugs lines, and again in the evening. We have been working closely with the city council to make them aware of this, who are in the second tier of the Mayor's plan to house these rough sleepers. Obviously drug support is also offered.
"What my angle is, is to remove permanently those drug dealing lines and then to send out text messages to people on the drug dealers' phones, (drug users) saying if you need some help and support contact us. We want to remove that easy access for them to get the drugs."
Worryingly, police have identified children working for some of the drugs lines. Detective Inspector, Paul Crompton said: "This operation is being driven by the community's concern raised directly with us, and with councillors. We are seeing a lot of ancillary inquisitive crime that is massively impacted on local residents, such as theft from cars, by users to fund their drug habits.
"Also because there are a number of drugs lines in close proximity, one of the key things we have been driven by for last 18 months to two years is to drive down the risk if firearms discharges. We have had them in Miles Platting, and for us one of the key things is to remove the driver for that which is rival OCGs competing for drugs markets.
"We have been successful in getting discharges down on the district, but this part of that strategy to keep them down. But predominantly our intention is to make Miles Platting a safe place for people who live there. This weekend the Manchester Evening News reported on a local post office closing down because it was a repeated target - that is not lost on us."
Operation Comanche was launched in July after months of planning, and ran until December. Since then police have been liaising with the Crown Prosecution Service regarding the calibre of the evidence gathered before carrying out raids yesterday and today.
"It takes time to put something in place that really delivers an impact in an area. We want to back up the work we have done with a neighbourhood policing response. Their will be other activity to keep this drug market away from it has been.
"This has been down to months and months of work. We have been supported by the North West Regional Organised Crime Unit, and my team has worked very long hours under tight timescales. It has been a test purchase operation, so we have officers posing as drug users buy off the dealers and evidence those purchases.
"We are surprised by some people who are involved who have links to other serious criminality, particularly in relation to firearms. Part of our strategy is to take out people involved in firearms anyway that we can - this is one way."
Between April 2020 and March 2021 there were 26 shootings in the North Division. Detective Inspector Crompton said: "It accounted for about 50 percent of the North West region's firearm discharges - we can't have that, and the focus is to drive that down. It is always due drugs and organised crime groups.
"People can get complacent because it is one OCG against another but we saw with a shooting on Briscoe Lane there was a member of the public driving along who gets a bullet lodged in the back of his car - a very short distance from a primary school in the middle of the day. We will not tolerate that at all.
"North Manchester is a challenging place. The team I have are driven, determined, and producing fantastic results, and making a difference for people living here. We want to support the silent majority living there, so they do not feel isolated."
Police believe profits made by the gangs are huge. Detective Sergeant Pickavance said: "There are 450 rough sleepers around Manchester. I would suggest a large number of them, at least twice a day, will go into north Manchester to purchase class A drugs at £20 a round. We have identified at least six drugs lines running in that little area of Miles Platting and Beswick.
"They are using the money for ridiculously expensive clothes like tracksuits, and hire cars. One person we have identified was spending £1,500 a month on a car. I have been many many houses where you'll see a number of Selfridges bags in the houses - all goods bought with cash. They will think nothing of spending £1,000 on a Saturday night in Manchester. These drug dealers are leeching off our communities. and it's time to fight back."
