DEADLY HARVEST
Lawless London’s crime epidemic driven by bumper cocaine harvest in Colombia, says leaked Home Office report
VIOLENT crime across the Britain is being blamed on a glut of cocaine flooding the country, a leaked Home Office report has said.
The document puts the blame for the current epidemic of murders, stabbings and street robberies – often carried out by brazen moped muggers – down to an “excess supply” of cocaine and crack cocaine.
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Gangs are said to be moving into new markets in villages and seaside towns to sell the drugs.
The report, marked “official sensitive”, also found the supply of firearms was on the rise and noted that the seizure of automatic weapons had more than doubled in two years.
It was written in March and circulated to Home Office ministers and senior officials.
The report, leaked to , found a 42 per cent increase in positive tests for cocaine and a 28 per cent increase in drug injectors using crack cocaine, and 10 per cent rise in violent crime in the last year.
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It concluded: “We are now certain that drugs are playing an important role in driving up homicide, and it is highly likely to be affecting other serious violence too.”
The highlighting of the report comes after a 35-year-old man was stabbed to death near to Turnpike Lane Tube station in North London that appears to have been drug related.
Comedian Michael McIntyre was mugged by two men on a moped while he was on the school run with his two kids.
The attackers smashed his car windows last Monday before stealing his Rolex watch in Golders Green, North London.
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In the past year there have been 60 moped muggings in London every day.
Scotland Yard received 22,025 crime reports linked to scooters, mopeds and motorcycles in the 12 months to May – a year-on-year rise of 50 percent.
In February more than 250 knives and swords were seized across London in just one week and 283 people, many of them teenagers, were arrested for carrying them.
On Saturday a schoolboy appeared in court accused of seven robberies in an hour-long spree in London while on the back of a moped.
Violent crime across the country is also rising with knife attacks up by 22 percent and robberies rising by 33 percent, according to the Office of National Statistics.
Michael McIntyre talks to police after he was robbed of his watch at gunpoint whilst doing the school run
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Louise Haigh, the shadow minister for crime, told the paper: “A toxic cocktail of a more aggressive and profitable drug market in the context of eight years of austerity have created the conditions for violent crime to thrive.
“The Government must invest in the police immediately to begin to undo some of the damage that taking 21,000 officers off our streets has done.”
The Home Office report says one of the key “drivers” in the rise in violence is the increased supply of cocaine and crack cocaine, fuelled by a bumper harvest in Columbia over the past two years.
The Sun Online has contacted the Home Office for comment.
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