Essex Police seize £350,000 drugs as they target gangs

This figure includes a cannabis cultivation in Chelmsford where officers executing a warrant recovered cannabis plants with a street value of £150,000. The rest comprises cocaine, heroin and other illegal drugs.

North Disruptor is one of three such teams in Essex who work with other community and specialist teams – including CID, the Operational Support Group, Force Support Unit, Dog Section and community policing teams – to target organised criminal activity and behaviour that impacts communities, and to bring offenders to justice.

North Disruptor officers arrested 156 people on suspicion of a variety of offences during 2022, including attempted murder, assault causing grievous bodily harm, aggravated burglary, conspiracy to supply controlled substances, conspiracy to convey controlled substances into a prison, possession of drugs with intent to supply, cultivation of cannabis, affray, careless driving and driving without insurance.

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They also seized about £200,000 in cash suspected to be the proceeds of crime and recovered several weapons, including machetes and other knives.

Disruptor officers often go out on proactive plain-clothes patrols and during the year they also stopped and searched 275 people across the Braintree, Chelmsford, Colchester, Maldon, Tendring and Uttlesford districts.

Cocaine wraps seized in Braintree (Image: Essex Police)

People are stopped and searched if officers suspect they are carrying stolen or prohibited goods, such as drugs, or offensive weapons.

A 23-year-old Peterborough man was stopped by sharp-eyed Disruptor officers in Dovercourt in October after they spotted him throwing away a knife.

He was jailed for 16 weeks at Colchester Magistrates' Court after admitting possession of a knife in a public place.

Sergeant Bull, of North Disruptor, says: “Drug use, drug dealing and drug supply is associated with serious violence and causes a great deal of harm to our communities and to vulnerable people within them.

“Stop and search is a good tactic to help keep people safe because it disrupts and deters criminal activity, particularly the carrying of knives and dealing of drugs in public.

“And we mount various proactive policing operations, working with working with other specialist policing teams to identify and arrest suspects for other crimes.

“But it’s the warrants which really enable us to tackle the dealers and suppliers at source and take large quantities of drugs off our streets.

“While we use our own intelligence, we often need additional help and information from the public. So, please tell us what you know about criminal and anti-social behaviour in your area. Information about car number plates, names, CCTV and doorbell images is all useful knowledge which will help us to target those responsible.

“Don’t assume we already know, report it via our website at www.essex.police.uk/ro or by ringing 101.”