County lines gangs use Snapchat as their main tool to lure teenagers

Rapper used teens for 30,000-a-week job

- Anthony France

SNAPCHAT is the main tool being used by gangs to recruit children into county lines drug rings, police warned today after they seized £1 million worth of drugs in a crackdown.

Teenagers are being lured in by offers of cash, mobile phones, vapes, and clothes in messages sent on the app and other social media platforms and then made to courier cocaine, heroin, and cannabis from London to smaller town and cities.

Snapchat lets users exchange messages, pictures, and videos that disappear after they are viewed. Detective Chief Inspector Dan Mitchell, head of Scotland Yard's county lines taskforce, said officers visit classrooms to urge children to reject messages like one sent out by drug dealers asking “who wants to make £500 this weekend?”.

He told the Standard: “With county lines, we see Snapchat being one of the main tools for recruitment. That’s hard for policing to fight against. But we are working with schools to build resilience in young people. That is the way forward, to give them the knowledge to understand this is a trap.”