What is your understanding of ‘County Lines’

[ScarletWitchM]

I’ve read and heard different definitions of what ‘County Lines’ is.

what is it you think / believe/ understand County Lines to mean?

Thanks - I might DM you after I show her this thread 😊

They do go to different places. A lot.

He could just be collecting from the main dealer and then moving it to another person.

Does he have money and items he can’t account for?

He's the one in the other area

But thier 'role' could be local till they build up experience and get in too deep.

I personally think its better that they get caught. Yot try to divert them from criminality

The "County Line" in literal terms is the list of phone numbers of regular drug users in a given area, usually a small town or district of a city, that is held by the chief dealer for that area zone. The county line is valuable in itself, it's like a sales contact list, and the "holder" of the line (a senior dealer) will sometimes sell it on for significant money. Anyone who owns the county line can easily make a tidy profit by offering whatever drugs they have to the contact list, knowing there are always addicts who'll take up the offer.

The term has more broadly come to signify the use of vulnerable young people to transport the drugs from the cities where they are imported/grown/prepared to the area zone where the county line operates.

How does she know he hadn't CNN left the area? Find my friends app?

They use scooters and take the train

The bbc comedy outlaws touches on this - the importance of the phone, plus then grooming and use of children. It’s very well intertwined into the overall comedy plot, and not itself treated as comedy.

This happened to my nephew, he did not leave the area, he was dealing/running in his local area. It seemed like he was being groomed and controlled by a sub-gang who lived locally to them. Then when he inevitably got into trouble with the gang, the big guns got involved and started making real threats and it all came out. Absolute mess of a situation. He ended up having to go to a residential children's home on the other side of the country to keep him safe (he is grown up now, this was a few years ago).

They knew that my nephew was vulnerable and had moved up North and rurally to get him away from the city and the drugs/gangs before his teenage years! I unfortunately didn't know anything about County Lines until a couple of years after it all happened but it all fits perfectly. What I'm astounded about in hindsight is that the police never explained County Lines to them at the time it was happening, they thought it was a one off thing.

Thanks everyone, seems he might already be involved- I’m in London and they are in the south coast so hard to know everything that is happening except what my friend tells me.
think I’ll visit and have a good chat with her and see what’s happening and give her some of your advice such as contact school and police and check his room for stuff.

I’be heard of county lines etc but never thought I’d know someone involved with it - it’s so scary

thanks again for the clarification and advice

Actually no, thinking back, I think it was just running he was doing. Under the impression that he wouldn't get into any serious trouble because he wasn't selling himself.

So sorry to hear this - I think this sounds like what is happening here maybe. I hope your nephew and family are ok now xx

I’m obviously super naive.

I was thinking it’s the borders of a county, obviously.

I don’t think this phrase is In use where I am

Gang territory for selling drugs.

It’s cross Police force drug dealing activity. It doesn’t just relate to children being exploited to commit crimes.

County lines is a form of criminal exploitation. It is when criminals befriend children, either online of offline, and then manipulate them into drug dealing. The 'lines' refer to mobile phones that are used to control a young person who is delivering drugs, often to towns outside their home county.

Oh it certainly will be!

Young children - often vulnerable in some way - groomed and exploited to deliver drugs. Often they feel like these people are their friends, by the time they find out otherwise, they are trapped. Unable to walk away because something has happened which means that they somehow 'owe' them something.

Sometimes they're not groomed, they're forced.

Commonly they ask a child a 'favour', to post a letter through a door so they don't have to get out of the car. They then pursue the child and tell them they now work for them. Threats of violence or attacks on their families usually works. Once you're in, you're in. Getting out isn't easy.

They like to go for kids who look innocent and they make them carry drugs around in their arses in case they get stopped by Police and told to empty their pockets. Nice.

I've worked with CL kids and the stories are just unreal. It's utterly shocking and it makes me really hate the middle class people around here who think it's acceptable to just do a few lines 'for fun' on a weekend, completely oblivious to the misery they help perpetuate. I know one of the kids delivers to my village regularly.

City dealers picking off vulnerable more rural kids in towns and villages to deliver drugs for them. Noticeable by the sudden smart trainers, bikes, phones etc. Apparently dealers are now targeting more middle class kids as they're spoils are less noticeable.

Dangerous slippery slope

I’m obviously super naive.I was thinking it’s the borders of a county, obviously.
I don’t think this phrase is In use where I am

You're not naive, instead uneducated @LovePoppy It’s not a slang ‘phrase’ it’s the literal name of the activity. It’s been headlines on every newspaper numerous times. The Government have run campaigns and have advice and a strategy for tackling County Lines.

The Government’s definition of ‘county lines’ is provided by the Serious Violence Strategy (2018):
“…a term used to describe gangs and organised criminal networks involved in exporting illegal drugs into one or more importing areas (within the UK), using dedicated mobile phone lines or other form of ‘deal line’. They are likely to exploit children and vulnerable adults to move (and store) the drugs and money and they will often use coercion, intimidation, violence (including sexual violence) or weapons.”
A common feature of ‘county lines’ is the exploitation of children and young people. The Strategy also provides a definition of child criminal exploitation as:
“…where an individual or group takes advantage of an imbalance of power to coerce, control, manipulate or deceive a child or young person under the age of 18 into any criminal activity:
a In exchange for something the victim needs or wants; and/or
b For the financial or other advantage of the perpetrator or facilitator; and/or
c Through violence or the threat of violence.
The victim may have been criminally exploited even if the activity appears consensual. Child Criminal Exploitation does not always involve physical contact. It can also occur through the use of technology.”
The National Crime Agency (NCA) and police have identified that city-based drug networks are extending their drug dealing activity into new areas, many of which are coastal and market towns. The organised networks recruit vulnerable people, often children, or those addicted to drugs to act as couriers and to sell drugs. The drugs networks are likely to use the homes of vulnerable persons as a base from which they can supply drugs. Often payment for this will be drugs. The National County Lines Coordination Centre’s (NCLCC) County Lines Strategic Assessment 2020 / 21 provides detail about the evolving nature of the county lines business model.
County lines operates by criminal networks from urban areas (in particular, London, the West Midlands and Merseyside) introducing a telephone number in a new area to sell drugs directly at street level. Potential buyers telephone a number which will have been used to send advertising texts and local runners are dispatched to make deliveries via a telephone 'relay or exchange' system. The 'runners' are invariably children, often boys aged 14 – 17 years, who are groomed with the promise of money and gifts and deployed or forced to carry out day to day dealing. Runaway and missing children are also used by the networks to expand inner city drugs operations into county towns. Children as young as 11 years of age have been reported as being recruited by these highly organised networks.

Thank you. That’s a very cohesive description