Tag Archives: drug trade

UK police under fire over children trafficked into drug trade

LONDON (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Police efforts to crack down on drug gangs that traffic children in Britain are being hampered by a lack of coordination and inconsistent treatment of victims, a watchdog said on Friday.

Thousands of children in Britain are estimated to be used by gangs to carry drugs from cities to rural areas, according to police who consider the crime a growing form of modern slavery.

Yet investigations into the drug trade are disjointed and often “less effective than they should be” due to limited police cooperation and competing priorities, Her Majesty’s Inspectorate of Constabulary and Fire & Rescue Services (HMICFRS) said.

The number of suspected British child slaves referred to the government in 2018 for support more than doubled to 1,421 from 676 in 2017, with many feared to be victims of the so-called county lines trade. Such data for last year was not available.

“Our inspection revealed that policing is currently too fragmented to best tackle county lines offending,” Phil Gormley, Her Majesty’s Inspector of Constabulary, said in a statement.

Children caught with drugs who are arrested then released from policy custody often do not have ready access to support services, and in some cases are put on train journeys home unsupervised after their release, according to the report.

Responding to the watchdog, the National Police Chiefs’ Council lead for county lines Graham McNulty said there was room to improve, but the police could not solve the issue alone.

“Schools, health and social care services, charities and others have a critical role in ending this evil practice and we will continue to work closely with them,” McNulty said.

Britain’s interior ministry said it was investing 20 million pounds ($26 million) to tackle the crime, and that a national coordination centre established in 2018 had made at least 2,500 arrests and protected more than 3,000 vulnerable people.

Phil Brewer, the ex-head of the Metropolitan Police’s anti-slavery squad, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation in October that police faced a challenge in trying to judge whether a child found dealing drugs should be treated as a suspect or a victim. [L5N26O4PA]

Gangs are luring some children into selling drugs by telling them they will not be punished if they say they were coerced, citing a defence intended for trafficking victims in Britain’s 2015 anti-slavery law, prosecutors told lawmakers last year.

The HMICFRS report said the government should launch a review into the legal defence and establish whether the legislation should be amended, a recommendation supported by Britain’s independent anti-slavery commissioner Sara Thornton.

“It is essential that police and prosecutors recognise county lines offenders who force their victims to carry drugs – often under the threat of extreme violence and intimidation – as perpetrators of modern slavery,” Thornton said in a statement.

($1 = 0.7652 pounds)

(Writing by Kieran Guilbert, Editing by Claire Cozens. Please credit the Thomson Reuters Foundation, the charitable arm of Thomson Reuters, that covers humanitarian news, women’s and LGBT+ rights, human trafficking, property rights, and climate change. Visit http://news.trust.org)

Deep in the jungle, Brazil struggles to battle drug trade

Brazil army soldiers on border with Colombia to combat drug trade

By Alonso Soto

VILA BITTENCOURT, Brazil (Reuters) – In an isolated army outpost deep in the Amazon jungle, Felipe Castro leads 70 soldiers on the frontline of Brazil’s fight against its biggest security threat: the drug trade.

Castro’s platoon patrols a 250 km (155 miles) stretch of the border with the world’s top cocaine producer Colombia in a bid to stem the flow of illegal drugs and arms that is fuelling a war between criminal gangs in Brazil.

“It’s a difficult job but not impossible,” said the gaunt 29-year-old, his face covered in green and black camouflage.

Watching from the bank of the murky Japura river, Castro directs his men as they use a metal speedboat to practise intercepting drug shipments on its fast-moving waters.

The river marks only part of Brazil’s porous border that stretches for nearly 10,000 kms, three times the U.S.-Mexico frontier.

After years of fragile truce, Brazil’s drug gangs have launched a battle for control of lucrative cross-border smuggling routes that has spilled into the country’s gang-controlled jails, sparking the bloodiest prison riots in decades.

More than 130 inmates have been killed so far this year.

In the vast state of Amazonas, the North Family gang has for years dominated the smuggling of cocaine that is shipped to Europe or sold in Brazil’s inner cities in a business believed to be worth $4.5 billion a year.

Brazil is the world’s biggest consumer of cocaine after the United States, according to United Nations data.

Machete-wielding North Family gangs decapitated dozens of inmates of the rival First Capital Command (PCC) in a New Year’s prison massacre that has sparked revenge killings across penitentiaries in northern Brazil.

President Michel Temer’s government is worried the prison violence could spill onto the streets of major cities such as economic hub Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, a major tourist destination.

Temer has vowed to improve military surveillance along the border, but senior commanders acknowledge drugs and arms will continue to flow in.

“Not even the United States has been able to stop drug trafficking along its border with Mexico,” said General Altair Polsin, head of the army’s ground operations command. “You have to tackle consumption to put an end to this.”

The military plans to increase its patrols on the Solimoes River, one of the main smuggling routes, and share intelligence with officials in neighboring Colombia and Peru.

Officers are putting their hopes in a technology upgrade to use infrared sensors and drones for border surveillance.

For this year, Brazil plans to nearly double its budget to about half a billion reais to finance a border technology program known as SISFRON, according to Defense Minister Raul Jungmann.

Updated technology is crucial for the 1,500 soldiers in the 24 garrisons posted along the Amazon border who divide their time searching for drugs with raids on illegal miners, loggers and hunters.

Other Brazilian security agencies fighting drugs and arms trafficking in this isolated swath of the jungle are also stretched.

Amazonas needs an extra 7,000 civil and military police to keep up with the increase in drug activity, according an internal report by the state security secretary.

“We are 30 officers overseeing an area the size of France,” said Marcos Vinicius Menezes, the federal police chief in Tabatinga, a city washed by the Solimoes that borders Colombia and Peru.

“If fighting the drug trade wasn’t enough, we also have to look after the world’s biggest tropical forest.”

(Editing by Daniel Flynn)

Dozens of Philippine officials surrender after being linked to Drug trade

A drug user raises his ink smeared hand after he surrendered to local government officials to take part in a government

By Manuel Mogato

MANILA (Reuters) – Dozens of Philippine government and police officials turned themselves in on Monday, a day after President Rodrigo Duterte linked them to the drugs trade, stepping up a war on narcotics that has killed hundreds since he took office in June.

More than 400 suspected drug dealers have been killed by police across the Philippines since Duterte took over, officials say. Broadcaster ABS-CNN put the number at over 800, though this includes executions by anonymous vigilantes.

On Monday, 27 mayors and 31 police officers, including a colonel, went to the national police office in the capital, Manila, to clear their names, fearing the president’s order to hunt them down if they failed to surrender within 24 hours.

Several local officials reported to regional police offices to beat the deadline set by Duterte, who won the elections in May on a single platform of fighting crime and drugs.

On Sunday, he identified about 160 officials in a name-and-shame campaign.

“I want to change,” a Cebu-based businessman tagged as a top-level drug trafficker told reporters after he met national police chief Ronald dela Rosa.

Nicknamed “the punisher” and “Duterte Harry” for his brutal fight on crime, Duterte has hit back at activists incensed by the surge in the killings of suspected drug traffickers.

Alarmed human rights groups have urged the United Nations to condemn the rise in extrajudicial killings. The Philippine Senate is to hold a legislative inquiry.

Dela Rosa reprimanded the police officers on Duterte’s list, threatening to kill them if they continued to protect drug traders and resell seized drugs. At one point, he challenged them to a fistfight.

“I am mad with what is happening,” Dela Rosa said in a speech to local officials and police. “I am ashamed. We should be the ones arresting these people, but we are protecting them. I will kill you if you will not change.”

All police officers linked to the drug trade were disarmed, investigated and could face criminal and administrative cases if there was strong evidence, said national police spokesman Dionardo Carlos.

“They will be accorded due process,” he added.

Besides local officials and police officers, Duterte’s list included two retired police generals, soldiers, paramilitary members, judges and a former lawmaker.

In a letter, Supreme Court Chief Justice Maria Lourdes Sereno on Monday told the president the court alone had the right to discipline judges. One judge named by Duterte died eight years ago and two others have already been removed.

In his maiden speech to the Senate, boxing icon Manny Pacquiao supported Duterte’s drug war and proposal to restore the death penalty for drug crimes, and advocated execution by hanging or by firing squad.

(Reporting by Manuel Mogato; Editing by John Chalmers and Clarence Fernandez)