PROTECTING vulnerable people is a major priority in the ongoing fight against ‘county lines’ drug dealing, a police boss has said.

County lines refers to big city gangs setting up drug dealing operations in smaller areas often by taking over homes of vulnerable people and using them as a base – known as ‘cuckooing’.

It can also refer to crime networks exploiting children to sell drugs, often forcing them to travel across counties.

South Worcestershire Superintendent Damian Pettit said he chairs a strategic group which, among of other things, will “map who we believe are most likely to be exploited and who are being exploited”.

He said the county lines issue is not unique to Worcester, but it is becoming “increasingly sophisticated for the sale of drugs and the exploitation of vulnerable people”.

“We will look for preventative measures, education, we will look at protecting them, we will look at directing to other agencies and will also look at people that are recognising themselves as being exploited or are to be exploited.”

He continued: “We do an awful lot of work around disrupting, deterring and holding to account people, with good sentences coming out of it.”

He went on to say: “[But] once you take one drug dealer out of the scenario, that void is very quickly filled one way or another, either because that’s the criminality they’re into or because people see a gap in the market and because it’s lucrative.”

When asked whether county lines is the biggest threat to the city, Supt Pettit said: “I think it’s hard to say any one thing is our biggest threat and that’s why we need to be agile and responding to emerging threats.

“Because as soon as you focus all your resources on one issue the danger is you neglect all the other issues that our community have that’s not so overtly reported on.

“We know behind closed doors a lot goes on, whether that’s intimidation and fraud of vulnerable people or whether that’s domestic abuse involving people who aren’t ready to tell us but we’re trying to understand who needs our help and that’s relying on the public to tell us what they see and what they hear.”