RACE TO SOLVE KETAMINE CRISIS

WITH its stunning Victorian architecture, tree-lined avenues and reputed health-giving spa waters, Harrogate, in North Yorkshire, has been a desirable destination for people to live and visit for centuries.

- RICHARD ASHMORE

It's often voted one of the happiest places to reside in the UK and has been dubbed “the third poshest town” in the country, behind Henley-on-Thames in Oxfordshire and Bruton in Somerset.

But this beautiful gateway to the Dales is attracting more than one kind of high society. Organised criminals see its relatively affluent population as an easy target for the so-called county lines drug dealing scourge.

North Yorkshire Police’s Head of Major and Serious Organised Crime, Detective Superintendent Fionna McEwan, told the Daily Express her patch had seen an “explosion” of cocaine and “more younger people using ketamine”, as well as drugs gangs using more sophisticated methods online to sell their illegal wares.

But lessons learned on the well-healed streets of the spa town are now set to be rolled out nationally, as the force has pioneered “groundbreaking” new tactics to help protect the public and bring the head honchos of the drug gangs to justice.

New tools include a dashboard which allows officers on the ground to instantly call up data which sets out a map of wherever they are with key locations connected to the narcotics trade. And a partnership with the University of York means it takes just 48 hours to test deadly high-strength drugs which have hit the market, compared to months nationally.

North Yorkshire Police have enjoyed some recent big successes, smashing two major county lines operations called the Jerry Line and Teddy Line in the past two years, as well as carrying out raids on 36 addresses across the county this month.

In April, four members of a county lines gang with Albanian connections, jailed for cocaine and cannabis supply, were ordered to pay back more than £115,000 from their ill-gotten gains under the Proceeds of Crime Act. Ringleader Ermal Biba was found to have a house and other assets in his native Albania.