County lines: Drug dealers ‘pretend to be uni students’

Gang members are enrolling in universities and masquerading as students in order to sell drugs in new cities, an academic has warned.

Dr Mohammed Qasim said dealers from county lines drug gangs become students to give themselves an alibi in case they are searched by the police.

“It’s not hard to get in university… it gives them a reason to be in the city,” said the drugs gang expert.

Police said drug gangs were becoming “more sophisticated” to avoid arrest.

More than 100 county lines gangs are operating across Wales, according to the National Crime Agency, with drug bosses pulling the strings mainly from London, Birmingham and Liverpool.

Authorities think the county lines network started in 2015 – cocaine deaths in Wales are more than four times higher than five years ago, with 31 last year.

Heroin and morphine deaths have almost trebled since county lines started, to 108 in 2018.

Dr Qasim, who interviewed members of a county lines gang in Swansea as part of his research, said dealers were hiding behind the “student image”.

He added that living among students helped ethnic minority gang members to blend into predominantly white areas of south and west Wales.

“The dealers now have to have an alibi as to why they’re moving 200 miles from one place to another,” said Dr Qasim, a researcher on ethnic minority gangs at Leeds Beckett University.

“They’ll live amongst students so they won’t be noticed so much.

“If you’re from an ethnic minority background there are some parts of Swansea, for example, where you’ll stand out, so you need to live in areas where there’s other ethnic minority groups.

“It’s not hard to get into university – universities will take people through clearing. They won’t actually go to university to study, it’s just a reason to be in a particular place.”

The organisation that represents colleges in Wales said they work with authorities to “meet any challenges county lines gangs might pose”, while universities are not commenting.

Dr Qasim met young county lines drug runners working out of a “really nice flat” in Swansea earlier this year and they wanted to set up their own “franchise” running drugs to Aberystwyth.

“One was kicked out of school, he didn’t have much going on in his life in London but in Swansea he was making money,” he said.

“He was away from gang crime, he’d been given a flat. I’d imagine you pay £1,100 a month in the city for a flat like that.

“He had five or six people living in a one bedroom flat back in London, so living in this apartment here was like heaven.

“These were victims of exploitation from older gang members. They put them into these cities, sell them the dream that they can make money and eventually set up their own operations.”

Source: (BBC News)